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BY J. C. KEENER, D.D., LL.D., 

One of the Bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church* South, 



" How can one in gentle terms remonstrate, when 
he has to begin by proving 1 the very existence of 
God?"— Plato: "The Laws," 88S; Jowett. 

" For if ye believe not that I AM, ye shall die in 
your sins." — Christ : John viii. 24. 



Nashville, Tenn. ; Dallas, Tex.: 

Publishing House of the M. E. Church, South. 

Barbee & Smith, Agents. 

1900. 



.K4- 



Entered, according" to Act of Congress, in the year 1900, 
By the Book Agents of the M. E. Church, South, 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



In Exchange 
Duke University 

1934 



HtefcicateD to ©ne 



WHO HAS MADE MY HOME ONLY A LITTLE 
LESS THAN EDEN. 



Contents. 

PAGE 

Preface vii 

General Introduction xv 



I. The Mosaic Record 3 

II. Creation and Time 8 

III. The First Great Whales 16 

IV. America Before the Flood and After 27 

V. The Fossilif erous Beds of Ashley, South Car- 
olina 37 

VI. The Ashley Beds 49 

VII. Fossil Contents of the Ashley Beds 61 

VIII. The Great Wall Built by God 64 

IX. The Fossil Barrier 73 

X. The Horse and the Flood 81 

XI. Extent of Changes Wrought by the Flood. . 85 

XII. The Mollusca and the Flood 91 

XIII. The Nautilus Its Own Successor 101 

XIV. Universal Destruction of Life by the Flood. 107 

$be (SarDen ot JEben. 

I. Scientific Doubt 115 

II. The Garden of Eden 120 

III. The Site of Eden 122 

IV. Age of the World— Eden 127 

V. Eden and Charleston 134 

(v) 



vi Contents, 

PAGE 

VI. The Fossil Record of Eden i 4I 

VII. Eden's Final Drama 158 

VIII. The Genesis of Eden 172 

IX. Evolution Broken at the Neck 196 

X. The Five Books of Moses 204 

Supplemental 1*otes* 

I. The Duke of Argyll on Huxley and Dar- 
win.. . . , 219 

II. Tyndall on the Mystery of Life 223 

III. The Egg and Evolution 224 

IV. " Paradise Found " 227 

V. The Tonnage of Noah's Ark, Compared with 

that of the " Oceanic " 230 

VI. The Higher Critics — Mr. Gladstone. ... 232 

VII. H. H. Howarth, M. P., on the Flood 233 

VIII. The Words Jehovah and Jehovah Elohim.. . 237 

IX. The First Verse in Genesis 238 

XZbe Ecumenical, Calvinism, etc* 

The Ecumenical of 1891 241 

Calvinism and Evolution ......... 247 

Illustrations. 

Jaws of Whale 19 

Strata of the Ashley Beds 39 

Mining the Phosphate 48 

Machine for Crushing Phosphate 60 



Preface. 

Under the prestige of high scholarship 
and honest inquiry, a most dangerous body 
of unbelievers in divine inspiration have 
assailed the five books of Moses, denying 
their authorship and invalidating their gen- 
uineness as the true history of God's deal- 
ing with Israel. Men of weight, in high po- 
sition, affecting to know theology as well as 
statecraft, Greek as well as Hebrew, have 
thrown themselves into this controversy, as 
once before they doubted the unity and au- 
thorship of the Iliad and the Odyssey. 

By the grinding word-by-word process of 
Professor Green, of Princeton, N. J., there 
is absolutely nothing left of these classical 
doubters but the chaff of a summer's thresh- 
ing floor. Whatever might seemingly yet 
remain of them has been sifted out by the 
Bishop of Ely, until not a single grain of 
truth can be found in this heap of well- 
threshed straw. 

(vii) 



viii Preface. 

These books of Moses are books of his- 
tory, of law, of journeys and campings, of 
numbers, of names, of mighty acts, of 
wonders of the deep and of the clouds, of 
a divine commissariat for the feeding of a 
million of armed men, and camp followers, 
in long marches over sandy wastes, with 
daily bread from heaven and quails from 
over the sea; and of streams in the desert, 
which, like a pursuing Providence, quenched 
the thirst of Israel for forty years. 

But beyond all else they are the books 
of God; in the might of his creative glory, 
evolving worlds, angels, spirits out of his 
own will, by the one Word, through the 
eternal Spirit. Of all which they, and they 
only, are the revealed record. 

We cannot in silence afford to see these 
inspired books invaded by critics who, 
under the plea of searching after truth, 
throw a cloud over every paragraph, \>y 
mere statement of cited versions, but which 
in fact they are not able to read. Dean 



Preface. ix 

Burgon, in his great work, " Revision Re- 
vised," states that but one man existed in 
England (Scrivener) capable of critically 
weighing versions with which these critics 
professed to be familiar. (Pages 231, 234.) 
The Bible holds its place in the hearts of 
men as the Word of God, by its history, its 
prophecy, and its vitality. Its history is the 
only absolutely true history ever written. 
The Pentateuch, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, 
the Kings, and Chronicles give us the facts 
that occurred in the various changes of the 
fortunes of Israel, and the secret springs 
which shaped the policy of its kings and 
counselors; motives open only to the eye 
of Omniscience. Besides this, there is an 
outside history of nations contemporaneous, 
recorded on tablets of stone, in cuneiform 
cipher, in hieroglyphic writing, on papy- 
rus, or on the linen wrappings of mum- 
mies, which are being brought to light at the 
present time, all confirmatory of the sacred 
Scriptures. ^ 



x Preface. 

The second line of supporting evidence 
is that of prophecy; for none but God 
could read the history of nations in ad- 
vance; the fate of the Jews, scattered but 
not destroyed; recognized everywhere, 
though without nationality; the fate of the 
great empires of Syria, Media, Persia, and 
Macedonia, long since foretold and fulfilled. 
Above all, the announcement of the Mes- 
siah, his sufferings, resurrection, and king- 
dom, all wonderfully portrayed and ful- 
filled. 

And yet if a third element, a concurring 
vitality, were wanting, the word would soon 
pass out of sight, or remain only as one of 
the marvelous products of human genius 
and intellect of past ages; venerable and 
curious, but as the leaves of the forest, 
fallen and withered by the frosts of time. 
Such, however, is not the case with the 
Bible, as evidenced in the number of vol- 
umes of the Holy Scriptures printed hourly 
in England, America, and in all civilized 



Preface. xi 

countries; in many islands, and once bar- 
barous coasts, in native languages. This 
vitality awakens and quickens the con- 
sciences of men, and transforms them from 
the power of darkness into the kingdom of 
God's dear Son. It reveals to the yearning 
spirit of man " the mystery which was hid- 
den from the generations and ages past," 
but is now made known in all its wealth; 
" which is Christ in you the hope of glory." 
But there is also a fourth line of evidence 
confirmatory of the Bible that comes from 
an unexpected source; that of geology. 
The recent discovery of enormous beds of 
fossils in the Carolinas proves incontestably 
that the continent of America before the 
flood was a great center of life, possibly 
the first. And these opportune discoveries 
providentially meet the latest stages of un- 
belief, so that by the light of His presence, 
as the mariners by stars, the Church of 
God still sails heavenward, amid deflecting 
currents and devouring waves, over fathom- 



xii Preface. 

less depths, taking many reckonings, but 
always consulting the one divine chart, per- 
fected by Him who made the sky, the sea, 
and the dry land. 

How words could make worlds was the 
problem which St. Paul declared could 
alone be solved by faith ; that the mind was 
incapable of understanding that great fact 
of creation, that worlds were framed by the 
word of God; that phenomena, " things 
seen," were not preceded by phenomena 
— that they were made of that which no 
thought, argument, or imagination could 
detect or depict. Hence science was non- 
plussed in its efforts at the first hour to ap- 
prehend the mighty work, as much as at 
any subsequent moment of time. Moses 
was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyp- 
tians, but he could not pass this limit of 
human thought. Had he been present 
when the morning stars sang together and 
the sons of God shouted for ]oy, had he 
heard the prelude attending the laying of 



Preface. xiii 

earth's foundations, the wonder would have 
appealed in vain to his understanding. The 
disciples saw Christ feed the multitudes 
with bread as from the oven, and took up 
basketfuls of fragments, but they saw not 
in him the One Word that made all that 
ever was made. 

Probably the first chapter of Genesis was 
as astounding to Moses in its ten words as 
were the thunders of Sinai to the children 
of Israel. There can be no clearer evi- 
dence that he wrote by inspiration than the 
record of this chapter. All its wonders — 
the creation of light on the first day, the 
creation of sun and moon on the fourth day, 
the evening and the morning for each day, 
the measured cadence of every sublime 
word, as it unrolled into a sublimer expres- 
sion of some new world of flora or fauna; 
the magnificent pauses, and silences, as if 
to wait upon the recognition and response 
of listening hierarchies — all this far tran- 
scended the natural powers of the lawgiver. 



xiv Preface. 

He wrote it because the Spirit of Truth re- 
vealed it, and then wondered as when he 
saw the bush in the desert on fire, but un- 
consumed, and heard the greater word, "I 
am that I am." 



General Introduction. 

The facts which this book proposes to 
establish are: 

i. That all life was destroyed by the 
flood in the western and in the eastern 
continents; that before the flood the west- 
ern were the centers of animal life, but 
ceased to be at the flood; that life began 
after the flood in the eastern only, and that 
by miracle. 

2. That every creature has been fossil- 
ized; those species that were in the ark 
and those out of it; that therefore we have 
a full record of the original creation ; that 
all that now live are also found fossilized 
as first made ; that all species were fossil- 
ized at one and the same time, and by the 
same electrical current, which was univer- 
sal, instant, and directly upon the catastro- 
phe of the flood — while dying their tomb- 
stones were set up. 

3. That America is the great Eden con- 

(XV) 



xvi General Introduction. 

tinent. Before the flood Noah would con- 
tinue near the site of the garden of Eden; 
and all animated nature springing from that 
center would for a long period annually re- 
turn to it; which in part accounts for the 
gathering of the so-called Pliocene crea- 
tures, of both land and water, at the flood, 
"as if they had been summoned there to 
die." 

4. That there is no fossil older than man; 
that bones and teeth of man have been fos- 
silized, which gives an overwhelming sup- 
port to the Pentateuch of Moses. 

5. That creation was in time, and that 
time not very long ago ; thus agreeing with 
Cuvier's estimate of the age of the human 
race. 

6. That since the flood, for a period of 
four thousand years, the two Americas, 
North and South, remained silent as an old * 
graveyard, and were, in fact, God's Burial 
Mound ; a superlative record of human dis- 
aster; more wonderful than those discov- 



Gene7'al Introduction. xvii 

ered by Rawlinson in the mounds of Meso- 
potamia, or those discovered by Schliemann 
at Hasirlik, Troja, and Mycenae; or those 
of Egypt that sleep in the ribs of the moun- 
tains or beneath the sands of the desert. 

That full one-half of the world should 
have been ordered back into oblivion, after 
sixteen hundred years of abounding life — 
which filled plains, mountains, rivers, and 
lakes of these continents with herds of 
oxen, horses, sheep, goats, and all other 
tribes of birds and beasts, so necessary to 
the domestic life of man — is the great, if 
not the greatest, discovery of the nineteenth 
century. 

That these bones and teeth, which were 
fossilized at the flood, should reveal to us 
the wealth of creation, as it came fresh 
from the hand of the Creator, shows the 
care that God has taken to secure a mon- 
ument of those mighty works which de- 
clared his wisdom and benevolence, and 
w r hich awakened throughout the universe 



xviii General Introduction. 

the high anthems of the sons of God at the 
laying of earth's foundation. 

7. As to the site of Eden. It is prob- 
able that the garden of Eden was on a very- 
high table-land, and was surrounded by a 
wall of rock, difficult to scale, and guarded 
by angels; that it inclosed a large area of 
diversified surface of fertile, well watered 
woodland; that it remained, from the fall 
to the flood, in sight, but unapproachable; 
that it was the last point to give way under 
the terrible storm that swept the whole 
earth of its life — possibly remaining until, 
by earthquake or volcano, earth's surface 
took its present outline. 

Who has not tried to realize the beautiful 
home and the sublime history of our first par- 
ents, as described in Genesis? It certainly 
is the poetry of truth to which the Scriptures 
introduce us in recounting the eventful year 
of man's innocency. 



%hz jfloofc. 



(i) 



I. 

The Mosaic Record. 

There is a certain firm grandeur in the 
first chapter of Genesis that declares its or- 
igin. Out of each verse He speaks whom 
no man hath seen or can see. Every line, 
every syllable, has in it the commanding 
precision of the words spoken on Sinai. 

There are human spaces, angelic spaces, 
and spaces which belong only to the God- 
head. Out of these regions of the Infinite 
there has been given to us through Moses 
a revelation exact, fixed, which shows the 
sublime work and unity of God, when by 
the Son and by the Spirit he created the 
heavens and the earth in six days, and rested 
on the seventh. 

The human mind could never have known 
how to begin or where to end such a drama, 
affecting as it did the universe, moral and 
natural. But in the opening chapter of the 
mighty record there is no hesitation, no 

(3) 



4 The Flood. 

speculation; but all is prompt, full, ever- 
enduring law, written upon freshly created 
matter. Comparatively, how childish are 
all other conceptions of this huge labor! 
The superhuman vision of Job gives a con- 
ception of creative energy and law that can 
only be conveyed in the lofty reaches of 
the Spirit: " Where wast thou when I laid 
the foundations of the earth ? Who hath laid 
the measures thereof, or who hath stretched 
over it a line? Upon what are the foun- 
dations thereof settled? who hath laid the 
corner stone of it, when the morning stars 
all sang together, and all the sons of God 
shouted for joy? Or who shut the doors 
against the sea, when it burst forth as from 
a womb; when I put a cloud upon it, as a 
garment, and thick clouds as a swaddling 
band; and appointed for it my bound, and 
set bars and doors, and said, Here to this 
place shalt thou come, and here let thy 
proud waves stop?" 

In the Mosaic account there is more than 



The Mosaic J?ecord. 5 

the mere labor of the great Architect. A 
hallowing thought reigns everywhere. All 
through the dry work of creating there was 
a blessing upon the floods and the light, 
and a beneficent purpose to be seen in the 
elements of nature. Thought-relations w 7 ere 
imprinted upon every creature, and upon 
every clod; and much more, which God 
discerns if we do not, but which we do if 
our hearts are full of his love. 

The pauses of God were to contemplate 
and approve these benign ends; and to mix 
with the acts of creation the element of 
time, without which the human mind would 
be incapable of its least conception. The 
extravagant periods which speculative geol- 
ogists have assigned to the earth — some as 
much as eighteen hundred thousand years, 
and others going into the millions — are of 
course in the face of all inspiration. For- 
tunately the recent discoveries of the fos- 
sil deposits on this continent have limited 
the range of all such speculators. The 



6 The Flood. 

fact that bones of the mammoth and of man 
are found side by side, and with them in- 
numerable remains of the ichthyosaurus, 
megatherium, and extinct monsters of the 
shark species, and of squalodons, has con- 
firmed the Mosaic record of the creation 
and of the flood. It would appear by these 
deposits that animal life was richer in va- 
riety and finish at its beginning than at any 
subsequent period of which we have knowl- 
edge. 

Wherever Eden was originally planted, 
it is now certain that in America are found 
fossilized remains far more varied and ex- 
tensive than have as yet been discovered 
in either Europe, Asia, or Africa; and that 
they indicate a long, undisturbed period of 
production before the flood. 

The enormous cemetery of marine and 
land animals in South Carolina tells its own 
story. 

The question as to where the ark ground- 
ed may be considered as correctly settled — 



The Mosaic Record. *j 

Mount Ararat in Armenia ; but the yet more 
interesting one, as to whence the ark took 
its departure, as still open. And to its so- 
lution we contribute this volume, present- 
ing many important facts which cannot be 
set aside by any fair-minded person. Mean- 
while the corroboration of the Mosaic rec- 
ord is of much greater moment than the 
discovery of the latitude or longitude of 
either Ararat or Eden. 



II. 

Creation and Time. 

What can science do in describing the 
first moment of creation? It cannot even 
conceive of the first creative word, which 
is so accurately recorded in the Mosaic ac- 
count, and which of all the words was the 
most pregnant in glory and power. Nor 
can it conceive of an}^ the least, connec- 
tion between speech and the creative act 
itself. Was it by an idea in the divine 
mind, or by a movement of the divine 
hand, or by some divine syllable, that sub- 
stance came out of nothing — this huge bulk 
out of that which did not appear? The 
orderly statement which preceded each 
day's work; then, afterwards, the fact it- 
self as having transpired; and then the 
final stamp placed upon it by the Creator, 
expressive of its fitness and of its contribu- 
tion to the good purposes of his will, would 
not have entered the human mind. 
(S) 



Creation and Time. 9 

Nor would the time which accompanied 
the act have been stated had not time en- 
tered essentially into the work itself. It 
must be remembered that each act tran- 
spired along with one distinct revolution 
of the earth; that it was this turn in space 
that put upon it the first notch of time, ter- 
restrial. And that the needed space itself 
was created along with the moving earth, 
as well as the time; that they first existed, 
not as outside and distinct from the cre- 
ating acts, but as part of them. 

Nor is the work represented as long de- 
layed by vast interruptions of space and 
time, but when once begun as going 
through with .short pauses of divine pur- 
pose; each day's work being brought 
within the compass of an " evening" and 
a " morning," and completed under the di- 
vine eye with a divine benediction. The 
time element, the night, the day, the daily 
finish, and the daily approval of His own 
work, would not have entered into any con- 



io The Flood. 

ception or history of creation save that of 
the inspired penman. 

Let the reader try to think how he would 
create one grain of sand — and he is as apt 
to think sensibly as any other uninspired 
person. He will find that the method of 
creating contradicts his ideas as much as 
the fact itself transcends them. One could 
scarcely expect to turn a log over by mere 
thought, much less a world; and certainly 
not to make it. The power to create sand, 
or matter of any kind, by speech, would be 
quite as far from the ideas of man. In- 
deed, thought would seem to be the more 
probable instrument for working with the 
invisible elements of nothing, in a mere 
void, and in the utter absence of light. 
But God "spake' where there was no 
room for echo; and the word made its own 
room, and filled the space with its own 
glory. The first utterance of the mighty 
will surpassed all other creative wealth, and 
in extent held all that came after in all its 



Creation and Time. II 

unwasted strength and beauty, outstream- 
ing to the utmost bounds of the stellar uni- 
verse. 

This orderly substance of earth must 
have had an orderly beginning. Speech 
implies the Presence of a Person. It is the 
highest perfection of creative skill. Only 
such a creature could hold the divine 
purpose. God "spake," not to the void 
merely, but in the hearing of the heaven- 
ly hierarchies, and "it was done." The 
syllables holding his wisdom, power, and 
love revealed to them his highest form of 
communion with his intelligent creatures. 
Until then they knew not the ineffable full- 
ness of the divine word. It was the revela- 
tion of a power which, by and by, was to be 
employed in the creation of sons of God. 

The principle of growth that had essen- 
tially a large place in creation was very dis- 
tinct from it. It requires the element of 
time in all its working. Its laws had first 
to be framed, and then lodged permanently 



12 The Flood. 

in substances, as a continuous vitality. 
Creation and growth cannot be mixed; 
creation goes before everything except the 
word. If we subtract the idea of growth 
from that of creation, we shall find its de- 
mand for the element of time greatly mod- 
erated. 

He had made all things, whether visible 
or invisible, whether angels, principalities 
or powers, thrones or dominions, is called 
the Word of God, because by his syllables 
they were created. The ninetieth Psalm, 
"the prayer of Moses, the man of God/' 
gives us the grandeur of the creative hour, 
as compared with which the idea of a 
growth is unutterably meager: "Before 
the mountains were born, or ever thou 
hadst formed the earth and the world, even 
from eternity to eternity, thou art God." 
"The birth-travail in the production of a 
world, in its suddenness — for emotional 
grandeur," says Tayler Lewis, "for the 
feeling that comes from the ' Living Word,' 



Creation and Time. 13 

and without which thought and knowl- 
edge are dead — what are miocene, and plio- 
cene, and eocene, and the frigid decimals 
of the geological notation, to the power of 
language like this? " In the twent} r -eighth 
chapter of Job the sea has its natal period, 
as in this Psalm the mountains had theirs. 

The difficulty with us inheres in that we 
cannot conceive either of ourselves or of 
creation as outside of both time and space; 
but, in fact, they all came together. It is 
wonderful to see the earnestness of some 
evangelical writers as they plead for "room" 
in creation; that is, for more time. As if 
the periods asked for could in the slightest 
degree relieve the work of creation. But 
nothing can make creation easy; only reve- 
lation can present it intelligibly to the mind. 
There is less difficulty in accepting it as a 
command than as the result of a law feebly 
started by God on its way to a growth of 
expression, and which involves an infinite 
period of time for its completion. The 



14 The Flood. 

mind has no "room" in it for creation, 
apart from faith in the "Word of God"; 
by which we understand that " the worlds 
were framed," "so that things which are 
seen were not made of things which do ap- 
pear." (Heb. xi. 3.) 

As creation is itself the greatest of all 
miracles, atheists are uniformitarians, ar- 
guing that creation is still going on, as at 
first, and was therefore no more wonderful 
at any time than it is at present. But can 
any believe that the ages have added a sin- 
gle fleck of gold to the breast of the hum- 
ming bird? Many strong beasts and fear- 
ful creatures of the land and of the sea, 
which were marvelous in their build, have 
faded out, but none have been added to the 
animal kingdom. Their huge vertebra and 
powerful teeth tell the story of an extinct 
grandeur. Their majesty and hegemony 
have been fossilized and let into the rock 
forever. Man, too, has lost his original stu- 
pendous reach of vitality, stretching on and 



Creation and Time. 15 

on over whole centuries; but his years have 
dwindled to the period of fourscore as their 
latest boundary. Now we ask, What has 
gained, of all that ever was, by the lapse of 
time, whether in the heavens above or in the 
earth beneath? Has any achievement of 
the mind surpassed or equaled Job, the first 
epic ? And if the intellect has not advanced 
in its power of thought, sentiment, or im- 
agination, or in the divine quality of speech, 
we surely may not expect anything new in 
departments of creation lying much farther 
out from God. 



III. 

The First Great Whales. 

"A?id God created great zvhales, and every living 
creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth 
abundantly after their kind, and every winged fowl 
after his kind; and God saw that it was good. And 
God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, 
and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply 
in the earth." (Genesis i. 21, 22.) 

It will be seen that they were made — fin- 
ished. They were ready to multiply, to fill 
the waters in the seas; that is, to stock the 
seas with fish, and the earth with fowl. A 
special blessing was pronounced upon this 
food-providing creation. This was on the 
fifth day; on the sixth, man is presented 
with "dominion over the fish of the seas 
and over the fowl of the air." Their crea- 
tion was therefore an accomplished work; 
finished the day before — for man. 

As the fish and the fowl were made com- 
plete in their generations, and the laws of 
(16) 



The First Great Whales. 17 

production made inherent and perfect in 
the moment of their creation, so were the 
great whales. They, too, began complete, 
and came in for their share of divine ap- 
proval. Had they been merely " whales," 
they would have become "great' in the 
course of a thousand years, it may be: not 
made great, but "grown " great. But these 
were "created great" — great at once, by the 
creative Word that made all fish. This one 
creative Word has put a period to all theo- 
ries of evolution. Great whales do not go 
on to produce great whales; though after 
the lapse of a thousand years every whale 
becomes great. But these started great. In 
the Washington Territory, on the Pacific 
coast, a whale was stranded in 1892, sup- 
posed to be within fourteen j^ears of being 
a thousand years old — probably the hugest 
creature that ever grew. Its jawbone was 
at Chicago, in the World's Columbian Ex- 
hibition, in the Fishery building. It was 
placed as the door to the exhibit from 



18 The Flood. 

Washington Territory — twenty-four feet 
high, An admirable plate of it can be seen 
in the " Book of the Fair " (Bancroft Com- 
pany), Part xiv., page 523. The following 
statement of the dimensions of this huge 
creature and history of its death is given in 
the South Bend Herald, Washington Terri- 
tory — Mr. H. J. Hubler, editor: 

A Whale Whose Age is Computed at Nearly 
One Thousand Years. 

The largest whale that ever entered this harbor 
and one of the largest ever seen on this coast, washed 
ashore recently at Tokelund. The fish came in on the 
high tide, and lies just a little below Charles Fisher's 
bath-houses. It was alive and kicking, and did not 
finally surrender its lease on existence until the fol- 
lowing day about noon. County attorney M. D. Eg- 
bert had taken along a tapeline and carefully meas- 
ured the monster. The line showed an extreme 
length of one hundred and seventy-four feet and 
eight inches, with a "waist measure" of one hun- 
dred and sixty-one feet and six inches. County sur- 
veyor L. C. Vickrey figured on the weight of the 
"animile," and pronounced this member of the balaa- 
noidea family to weigh forty-seven and a half tons, and 
the blubber and whalebone to be worth, at current 







JAWS OF WHALE, SECTION ENTRANCE, 



(19) 



[This plate is in the " Book of the Fair," published at Chicago, 
and is inserted here by special consent of the publishers. The 
jaw of this whale was twenty-four feet 'long. Part of the inscrip- 
tion refers to another whale in the Washington exhibit.] 



The First Great Whales. 21 

prices: oil, $9,795; bone, $1,000 — making a net total 
of $10,975. 

Attorney L. E. Ginn attempted to compute the age 
of the subject under consideration, and concluded 
from the transverse lines on the baleen that his fish 
had existed for nine hundred and eighty-six years, 
lacking but fourteen years of having lived the longest 
term of whale life. The pectoral fins are twelve feet 
long and seven feet broad. The mouth is twenty-four 
feet long, the blow holes fifteen inches long; and the 
half-hundred bathers in the water at the time it came 
ashore say the noise of spouting water was deafening, 
and the spray ejected ascended at least fifty feet in the 
air. The thrashing of the tail on the water in the 
struggle to regain the channel was heard at McGow- 
an's cannery at the mouth of North River, four miles 
away. 

County school superintendent L. W. Fanscher fur- 
nished some historical facts in regard to the whale. 
Alfred the Great had been dead but six years when 
his whaleship first began to navigate the, waters of the 
earth. The old boy was one hundred and twenty 
years old when William the Conqueror was born, and 
may have been playing off English shores when he was 
crowned king. He was on earth at the time of the 
making of the Great Charter at Runnymede; he was 
middle-aged when the pilgrims landed at Plymouth 
Rock, and probably looked upon the wars of Napoleon, 



22 The Flood. 

the American Revolution and Civil War, with many a 
sad sigh and shake of the head for the ruthless slaugh- 
ter of humanity. 

A taxidermist secured the jawbone for the 
Columbian Exhibition. This description 
proves that with time and growth all whales 
could become one hundred and seventy-four 
feet eight inches long, and have a " waist 
measure" of one hundred and sixty-four 
feet six inches. Probably this was the lar- 
gest creature that ever grew, and illustrates 
those first creatures that were created on 
the fifth day. It is one among many illus- 
trations that "one day" is with God as "a 
thousand years," and a thousand years as 
one day. Time with the Creator of time is 
without measure. " He speaks, and it is 
done; he commands, and it stands fast." 
Whales are among animals such as the be- 
hemoth, and among fish such as the levia- 
than — the largest in size, in strength, and 
in possibility of growth; not, however, as 
large at first as after a thousand years of 



The First Great Whales. 23 

growth. But these whales of the fifth day 
began great — so great that it w 7 as recorded 
as a special instance of creative power. 
The size of the largest whale is set down 
in the Britannica as measuring eighty-five 
feet. 1 In Genesis no mention is made of 
" great" leviathans, or " great" elephants, 
or " great" behemoths, though all had 
put in them a law of enormous growth. 
These " great whales " were the statement 
of an instant creative act, not of a crea- 
tive law. 

2 The "blue whale," the largest of all known animals, 
attains a length of eighty, or even sometimes eighty- 
five, feet. Its color is a dark blueish gray, with small 
whitish spots on the breast; the baleen is black; the 
flippers are larger proportionably than in other eor- 
quals, measuring one-seventh of the total length of 
the body; and the dorsal fin is small, and placed very 
far back. This whale has usually sixty-four verte- 
bras, of which sixteen bear ribs. Like the others of 
the genus, this species seems to pass the winter in the 
open seas, and approaches the coast of Norway at the 
end of April or the beginning of May. {Encyclopedia 
Britannica^ vol. xxiv., page 524, note.) 



24 The Flood. 

CORRESPONDENCE WITH EDITOR HUELER. 

Ocean Sfrings, Miss., Sept. 8, 1899. 

Editor of the South Bend Herald, "Washington 
Territory, U. S. 

My dear Sir: Your answer to my former letter 
came duly to hand ; but by a very strange and annoy- 
ing accident it was mislaid in an hour, and has not 
been seen since. This will explain why I do not ad- 
dress you by name. I should be very much obliged 
for a duplicate of what I valued so highly. 

I found one excellent picture of the jawbones of 
the whale in the Bancroft " Book of the Fair,' 7 Colum- 
bian Exposition of 1894, published at Chicago — Part 
xiv., page 523. This was found from information in 
your letter. 

Will you do me the favor to answer a few ques- 
tions in regard to that hugest creature that was 
stranded atTokelund? It was probably the largest 
that ever gre-w, and probably as large as those great 
whales that were at first created. (Genesis i. 21.) 

1. Was there any photograph taken of this whale? 

2. What was the actual yield of its immense bulk, 
in money, or what was done with it? 

3. Do you know the name of the taxidermist who 
secured its jawbones and placed them in the Colum- 
bian Exposition, or where these bones are at present? 

I hope that these inquiries will not give you any 
trouble bevond the stating what vou yourself know. 



The First Great Whales. 25 

With many thanks for your former letter, and high 
consideration, I am very truly yours, 

J. C. Keener. 

P. S. — Were there any editorials written by you on 
the wonderful event atTokelund besides the one head- 
ed " Methuselah Knocked Out," etc.? 

If there were any photographs taken of this whale, 
please tell me where I can procure one. 



South Bend, Wash., Sept. 18, 1S99. 
Rev. J. C. Keener, Ocean Springs, Miss. 

My dear Sir : Your third letter at hand, and as I 
have not a copy of my other letter here at the office, 
will answer the questions now, and to-morrow copy 
the other for you. 

There were photographs taken of the whale, and I 
will endeavor to obtain one for you. 

The whale was not turned to any commercial profit. 
No one undertook to assume ownership, and when de- 
composition began it was surrounded with driftwood 
and burned where it lay on the beach. 

Taxidermist John Hudson, now somewhere in Alas- 
ka, included the jawbone with the other "game and 
fisheries " exhibit from the state of Washington; and 
it is my impression that after the close of the Fair the 
whole collection of preserved fowls, fishes, and ani- 



26 The Flood. 

mals were placed in Olympia, the state capital, as the 
nucleus of a museum. 

I do not remember whether I mentioned the whale 
more than that once or not. I probably mentioned its 
destruction, but it would be quite a task to hunt it up 
in the files, as I have never taken time to bind them jet. 

Can't find any photograph of the whale. 

Yours, H.J. Hubler. 



IV. 
America Before the Flood and After. 



m. 



The Ashley beds of South Carolina in» 
dicate beyond a doubt that the western 
hemisphere once abounded in animal life of 
every variety; that if not originally, yet it 
had come to be a great center of organic 
existence at the period of the flood. It is 
not to be expected that a single deposit 
should contain absolutely the fossil of every 
species, yet there are few wanting in this 
huge cemetery of animate Creation, so few, 
as to make the supposition that with more 
time and discovery all will be found. 

In Europe, especially in northern Sibe- 
ria, in France, Italy, and England, extensive 
beds have been found and explored, which 
determine the common destruction of ani- 
mals and man by sudden and overwhelming 
catastrophe. In the main, they are land an- 
imals, amphibious. But they do not contain 
extinct saurians, sharks, seals., in touch with 

(*7) 



28 The Flood. 

extinct mammals — a vast fauna of land and 
water in one bed and in close contact, as we 
find in these phosphate beds. 

With such a history before the flood, a 
large continent crowded with life in its most 
active expression, the wonder arises, How 
came it that presumably nothing remained ; 
that both man and beast — " the horse and his 
rider " — disappeared ; that the slopes of the 
Atlantic, the prairies of Kansas, the heights 
of the Rocky Mountains, the pampas of 
Brazil, the range of the Cordilleras, became 
as still as death ? How was it that this im- 
mense wealth of herds, and flocks, and fish- 
es, and huge mammalia disappeared, passed 
away, without leaving their tracks to tell 
the story, or cause a suspicion of their hav- 
ing once been there? Had the inhabitants 
which usually attend such animals remained, 
the story might have come down to us that 
the horse and the ox and the sheep and the 
goat once browsed upon these great plains 
and aided the life of man. 



America Before and After. 29 

But for three thousand eight hundred 
and fifty years all remained quiet, except- 
ing only the slow advance by the way of 
the Aleutian Islands of wild beasts, and its 
accidental occupation by small companies 
of men who had been wrecked or blown by 
adverse winds out of their course. It has 
been but a few years since the geologist 
exhumed traces of the abounding life that 
once filled this great hemisphere of the 
west. Only since the opening of the Ash- 
ley beds is the full statement disclosed of a 
fauna, marine and terrene, equal to that of 
the greater hemisphere of the east. 

Such a catastrophe as left nothing in life, 
as searched every mountain, valley, plain, 
and crevice of a continent for its victims, 
could only have been accomplished by a 
huge flood of water. In the language of 
Mr. Howarth in the " Mammoth and the 
Flood," which must be accepted as the lat- 
est and highest authority in geology: 

Continental uniformity of results is only consistent 



30 The Flood. 

with a continental cause. This displaces the view so 
often urged by the patrons of easy methods in science, 
that the animals of the Pleistocene age chiefly perished 
by being drowned in rivers, and were buried by their 
mud— a view upon which we have already adverted 
when urged in regard to Siberia and Europe. Again, 
a destruction of life so complete, so widespread, so in- 
dependent of climatic and physical consideration, so 
absolutely at variance with every kind of normal proc- 
ess of extinction that we can think of, is assuredly 
consistent only with one theory, namely, that which 
appeals to a catastrophe on a gigantic scale. A huge 
hecatomb, covering two continents with the corpses of 
a myriad herds, can only be imagined as the result of a 
sudden, complete, and widespread catastrophe ; and this 
is even more certain when we remember how cosmo- 
politan in constitution and habits such animals as the 
horse, the mastodon, the megatherium, etc., must have 
been to have lived in the extremely diversified terres- 
trial provinces where their remains occur. 

The difficulty of meeting these necessities of the 
case by any theorj r of uniformity has been felt even 
more by inquirers on South American geology than 
in Europe or Asia. Darwin long ago said: "It is im- 
possible to reflect on the changed state of the Ameri- 
can continent without the deepest astonishment. For- 
merly it must have roamed with great monsters; now 
we find mere pigmies compared with the antecedent 
allied races. . . . The greater number, if not all, 



America Before and After. 31 

of the extinct quadrupeds lived at a period and were 
the contemporaries of the existing seashells. Since 
they lived no very great change in the forin of the 
land can have taken place. What then has extermi- 
nated so many species and whole genera? The mind 
at first is irresistibly hurried into the belief of some 
great catastrophe; but thus to destroy animals, both 
large and small, in southern Patagonia, in Brazil, on 
the Cordillera of Peru, in North America, and up to 
Behring Strait, we must shake the entire framework 
of the globe." The great naturalist then faces the va- 
rious theories which have been suggested to account 
for the facts, but discards them in turn and leaves 
the problem unsolved, proving how great a stum- 
bling-block he, the most ingenious of inquirers, found 
it. (Page 351.) 

The opinion of Mr. Jeffries Wyman, on 
4 'Fossil Mammals' 1 (page 3), we give as 
quoted by Mr. Howarth, still strongly con- 
firmatory of the abounding life and equally 
abounding death illustrated in the fossil rec- 
ords of South America: 

From the various recent discoveries of the remains 
of mastodons in South America, it appears that they 
once had a geographical range over nearly the whole 
of that continent, since they were found by Humboldt 



32 The Flood. 

as far north as Santa Fe de Bogota, especially at the 
Camp des Gians, where they were collected in great 
numbers, and have also been discovered as far south 
as Buenos Ayres, on the Atlantic, by Admiral Dupo- 
tel, at Concepcion de Chili, on the Pacific, and at vari- 
ous intermediate points in Peru, Chili, La Plata, Bra- 
zil, and Colombia, by Dombay, Gay, Alcede, D'Or- 
bigny, Darwin, and others. Thus their remains extend 
from five degrees north to thirty-seven degrees south, 
and on both sides of the great chain of the Cordilleras 
from ocean to ocean. What is still more remarkable, 
the bones of mastodons have been discovered at un- 
usually great elevations, according to D'Orbigny, some 
up to the borders of perpetual snow. One of the mo- 
lars described by Cuvier was obtained by Humboldt 
on the volcano of Ibambura, at an elevation of seven 
thousand two hundred feet above the level of the sea. 
It has been greatly urged that they were killed off 
by the glacial cold. Can anything be produced more 
fantastic than such a view? If the glacial cold in- 
vaded the tropical regions of Brazil and Guiana, as 
Agassiz has suggested, and took possession of the 
equatorial belt itself, how is it that any life survived at 
all anywhere on the earth save those forms of it espe- 
cially adapted to exclusively boreal conditions? . . . 
What became of the myriad tropical products of the 
valley of the Amazon while the cold was so intense 
there that it killed off not merely gigantic sloths, but 
horses and lamas, all of which could live as far south 



America Before mid After. 33 

as Patagonia? The notion is supremely ridiculous, 
and affords another example of the crudities which 
take possession of scientific men when they offer in- 
cense to some metaphysical idol. 

This mixture of animals of different habits and 
habitats — of carnivores, and pachyderms, and herbi- 
vores — is most puzzling, especially when the remains 
show so often a common freshness and an unworn and 
ungnawed appearance. Death certainly has no para- 
sites, and is singularly neutral in its methods, but it 
does not, in its normal moods at all events, collect 
great mylodons and thickly hided megatheriums, nim- 
ble opossums and softly cuirassed glyptodons, caries 
and mastodons, and kill them together, and bury them 
together. 

These full quotations from masters of the 
science of geology are enough to establish 
the overflowing life of the western hemi- 
sphere at one period in its history. Yet, 
strange to say, all of it has been obtained 
from the history of death written and graven 
in stones by the power of God, and distrib- 
uted by him over its entire surface of field, 
mountain, and flood. 

Until the arrival of the Spaniards, near 
four hundred years ago, none of this mass 
3 



34 The Flood. 

of varied animal life existed nor was recog- 
nized as ever having been on the continent, 
or on any of the islands of the Americas. 
We can now form some conception of the 
rapid production of fauna by what has been 
its progress since that period. It is not un- 
like the increase of the rabbit in Australia 
during the last fifty years. 

To get a full idea of the destruction 
brought in an hour by the Noachian flood, 
we must suppose what was the sum of un- 
disturbed animal life during a growth of 
one thousand six hundred years. The sen- 
tence of death in the garden now first found 
its full expression in the myriads of herds 
and flocks, of huge mammals, marine and 
terrene, that were hushed in a silence that 
continued unbroken for four thousand years. 
It is only of late that the curious scientist 
has scratched the moss and earth from the 
time-covered tombstones of man and beast 
which the Creator himself had set up in 
memory of the one great disaster that con- 



America Before and After. 35 

signed the whole world to an equal fate. 
This vast burial of creation at the hands of 
the Creator certifies to the truth of inspi- 
ration, that originally all had been called 
into existence out of nothing. For the fiat 
that created all could alone destroy all at a 
word. 

Such a continent of life and then of 
death fully vindicated the wisdom which 
thereby confirmed to all ages the truth of 
the Pentateuch. The pick and the spade 
can now effectually dissolve the higher crit- 
icism of unbelief. Had the western hemi- 
sphere appeared again full of life directly 
after the flood, as the eastern has been ever 
since that catastrophe, the whole truth might 
have failed for lack of evidence. In the 
face of inspiration there would have been 
placed the living masses of the fauna of 
Asia, Europe, and Africa, and the claim 
of an uninterrupted life since the memory 
of man. The caches of petrified bones 
and tusks found here and there over the 



36 The Flood. 

wide surface of continents would have been 
held in evidence of partial floods, or of flu- 
vial action, disturbed through great reaches 
of time and at long intervals. The fiat of 
God would not have been heard amid those 
confused voices of a higher criticism. But 
now the silence of the dead can be heard 
farther than the sound of the living. 



V. 

The Fossiliferous Beds of Ashley, South 
Carolina. 

The work of Schleimann, which gave 
reality to the Troy of Homer, that of Raw- 
linson, of Sir George Lewis, of Ledyard, 
and others, in defeating the criticism de- 
structive of Roman, Grecian, and sacred 
history, is equaled, if not surpassed, by 
the pick and spade of Professors Holmes 
and Tuomey, in the Ashley beds of South 
Carolina. 

There is a certain precision in the spade 
which cannot be found in the analysis of 
German criticism. It would seem as if 
the purpose of God had been to hide con- 
firmatory evidences of the sacred Scriptures 
for centuries, that in due time they might be 
brought forth from the deep burial chambers 
of Egypt, the banks of the Euphrates, the 
mounds of Nineveh, the desert of Moab, 
and the rocky heights of Sinai. 

(37) 



38 The Flood. 

While these discoveries have been going 
on in Asia, which give so much additional 
strength to the prophetical and historical 
books of the Old Testament, there have 
been recently opened vast beds of fossil- 
ized substance in the American continent 
which would indicate that it ranked first in 
the wealth of animal life at the very earliest 
period of creation. In 1844 beds of phos- 
phate of lime in nodules and small bowlders 
were discovered in South Carolina, extend- 
ing from the Santee to the Savannah riv- 
ers. These beds were presently found to 
be rich in both land and marine fossils of 
every conceivable kind. They were even- 
ly disposed over a surface of more than a 
hundred miles in diameter, averaging some 
six feet in depth, containing sixty-five per 
cent, of bone phosphate, and more than 
eight hundred tons to the acre. The bones 
and teeth of gigantic extinct saurians, ich- 
thyosaurians, and squalodons were mingled 
with those of the ox, horse, goat, hog, 



I 




STRATA OF THE ASHLEY BEDS, 



(39) 



Fossiliferous Beds of Ashley. 41 

sheep, deer, muskrat, beaver, and opossum, 
which are found usually in the neighbor- 
hood of man ; as well as those of the bear, 
tiger, elephant, mammoth, sperm whale, and 
megatherium. 

Besides these, there were underlying beds 
of marl containing univalve and bivalve 
shells, ninety per cent, of which were of 
mollusks still existing in the waters of 
South Carolina. In these beds were also 
found arrowheads which differed in shape 
from those of the North American Indian, 
and other evidences of human life; of which 
more by and by. 

These fossils were discovered by Profess- 
or Holmes, at that time one of the faculty 
of the College of South Carolina. It was 
he who, after the war, discovered the wealth 
of phosphoric acid these beds contained, 
and brought this fact to the notice of capi- 
talists, and succeeded in introducing the 
manufacture of fertilizers from these de- 
posits, which have become an article of 



42 The Flood. 

trade throughout this country and Europe. 
There may not be every species of animal 
life, but certainly the remains are here in 
amazing quantity of every genus both of 
marine and land creatures, not separated 
by layers of earth, or rock, or intervals of 
inorganic matter, but lying in touch of each 
other, buried together as they died, in one 
grave, overwhelmed by one disaster. The 
bones and teeth of creatures which geolo- 
gists have theoretically separated by Eocene, 
Miocene, and Pliocene periods; by Silurian, 
Devonian, Carboniferous, and Cambrian for- 
mations — all here and in situ; whether they 
belong to so-called Paleozoic, Mesozoic, 
or Cenozoic ages; from mollusk to mam- 
moth ; whether of marine or mountain habi- 
tat. Here they are, in these Ashley beds; 
and here they lived, until by some huge ca- 
tastrophe — having been summoned here — 
they died; and by their Creator's power 
were entombed, and embalmed in fossiliz- 
ing fluids of lime and silica, only to be un- 



Fossiliferous Beds of Ashley. 43 

covered in the lapse of ages, for human in- 
struction and confirmation of the Genesis 
of Moses. 

Had the deposit been only of bones, and 
of a small number of animals, scattered 
over a large surface, it would have been 
subject to the usual explanation of "fluvial 
action," which had mingled remains of 
recent date with the fossils of Eocene and 
Pliocene periods. But the deposit is large 
enough to contain all there was of life be- 
longing to the Postpliocene period. So 
long as a geologist reasons upon the re- 
mains of mastodon, eliphas, megalonix, 
mylodon, bisonlatifons, ursus, felis atrox, 
etc., of Mississippi; on those of masto- 
don, megatherium, etc., found in Missouri; 
upon the remains of the horse, elephant, 
moose, reindeer, and muskox, found in 
the ice cliffs of Arctic America, there is 
room enough in the separating space to in- 
dicate a possible difference in the periods 
of their existence. And while one cannot 



44 The Flood. 

roam amonn extinct mammalia, such as 
H} T potherium Venustum, etc., there is room 
enough for speculation; but when all these 
are found in familiar position, with the well- 
known remains of the horse, sheep, hog, 
and such animals as are domestic, feeding 
in the same field, criticism ceases to be de- 
structive. 

As to " fluvial action," 4< water-rolled 
fragments of bones," " accidental occu- 
pants," by which the teeth of the horse are 
found with those of the megatherium, the 
gigantic sloth, and mastodon: in the first 
place, they are in very large quantities ; 
next, they are larger than the ordinary 
horse tooth; and lastly, the enamel of the 
tooth is more completely folded than in 
those of the modern horse, which easily 
distinguishes them. 

The reader may not know the vast peri- 
ods which the theories of Lyell, Dana, Lei- 
dy, and others, would place between these 
creatures of the "prehistoric past" and the 



Fossiliferous Beds of Ashley. 45 

horse and ox of to-day; but thousands upon 
thousands of years are required by them to 
fill up the gap between the Megatherium 
and the Bos Taurus, the Ovis Ammen and 
the Sus Americanus, etc. They say "it 
is somewhat difficult to determine to w r hat 
particular geological formation or period the 
fossils collected on the Ashley shores are to 
be referred. The difficulty is especially 
great in regard to fishes, less so with the 
reptiles and cetaceans, and least so with 
other mammalian fossils." Difficult, of 
course, if there be any theory to maintain. 
But surely they are all fossilized; and of 
course at the instant, by the same flow of 
the fossilizing silica. Gigantic sharks, ta- 
pirs, and the Virginia deer, the tiger and the 
opossum, all overtaken in the same storm, 
lay down and were covered with the same 
floods, alluvial and diluvial. Besides this, 
all the fossil shells of the Eocene, Miocene, 
Pliocene, and Postpliocene periods are here ; 
two hundred and three species are in these 



46 The Flood. 

beds, perfectly preserved, of which ninety 
are known to be recent, now living in the 
waters of the South Carolina coast. 1 

J See "Pliocene Fossils," by Tuomey and Holmes. 
Charleston, S. C. : Russell and Jones, 251 King street. 
1S57. Also, " Postpliocene Fossils," by F. S. Holmes. 
Russell and Jones, Charleston, S. C. 1859. 



:# ; ''-*|! 



'& 



? s ® 




(48) 



VI. 
The Ashley Beds. 

We cite four of the most celebrated pro- 
fessors of geology and paleontology, as to 
the character of the fossils of the Ashley 
beds of South Carolina: Professor Leidy, of 
Philadelphia ; Professor Holmes, of Charles- 
ton, S. C. ; Professor Tuomey, State Geolo- 
gist of Alabama; and Professor L. Agassiz. 

STATEMENT BY PROFESSOR HOLMES.* 
There is an extensive formation in the low or flat 
country of South Carolina, which, according to geo- 
logical distinctions, is the most recent of the Tertiary 
division, called the Postpliocene. This is included in 
a belt extending from the seacoast ten miles inland. 

Three distinct beds belong to this formation. First, 
the marine, composed of a gray sandy clay, in which are 
imbedded innumerable small shells, of a species now 
common and living on the coast; and many large shells, 
in the position they occupied when living, having both 
valves entire and perfect as if destroyed suddenly. 

The second, a stiff blue clay, containing remains of 

l " Postpliocene Fossils of South Carolina.'* 

(49) 



5o 



The Flood. 



marine and terrestrial animals. . . . The fossil bones 
obtained from these strata are often in a fine state of 
preservation. . . . The marine beds lie immediately 
beneath, and are exposed on the high land which sur- 
rounds the swamp. If we take the one hundred and 
fifty species of mollusca^, whose shells are so beautifully 
preserved in these beds, and place the entire group 
alongside a similar collection of shells of the recent 
species living upon the coast, we will observe that they 
are identically the same in form, character, and every 
other respect. There are among the fossils two shells 
whose analogues are not now living upon the seacoast 
of Carolina, but are common in the Gulf of Mexico 
and West Indian seas. We also find the remains of 
the vertebrata, of the deer, opossum, raccoon, and 
others well known to be living at the present time in 
South Carolina; but we find with them two or three 
species that are no longer existing north of Mexico and 
South America — the peccary, the capabara, and the tapir. 
The mastodon, the megatherium, the mylodon,and one 
or two others, are extinct. The better to appreciate 
the analogy between the groups, as regards the living 
and the extinct species, we give them in tabular form : 



FOSSIL REMAINS. 


MOLLUSCA. 


VERTEBRATA. 


Species same as now living in South 
Carolina 

Species not in recent fauna of South 

Carolina, but in tropical latitudes.... 

Species in northern latitudes 


140 

2 

2 
2 


37 
3 

3 


Species presumed to be extinct 


5 



F. S. Holmes. 



The Ashley Beds. 51 

LETTER FROM PROFESSOR AGASSIZ. 
Key West, February 25, 1858. 

Professor F. S. Holmes — My dear Sir: I have not 
forgotten my promise to write you my impressions 
respecting your important discoveries of fossil mam- 
malia in the Postpliocene beds of South Carolina. In- 
deed, 1 have been thinking of them continually since 
I saw them, and nothing impressed me so deeply for 
many years past as the sight of these bones. I con- 
sider their careful study in all their relations as of the 
utmost importance for the progress of our science. It 
is true there is hardly any interest in the animals 
themselves, since they appear to be all well-known 
types; but their simultaneous appearance in the same 
beds, showing that they have lived together at a time 
when the white man had not yet planted himself upon 
this continent, renders their association as undisputed. 
How does it happen that horses, sheep, bulls, and hogs, 
not distinguishable from our domestic species, existed 
upon this continent, together with the deer, the musk- 
rat, the beaver, the hare, the opossum, the tapir, which 
in our days are peculiar to this continent, and not 
found in the countries where our domestic animals 
originated? The whole matter might seem to admit of 
an easy solution by supposing that the native Ameri- 
can horse, sheep, bull, and hog were different species 
from those of the old world, even though the parts pre- 
served show no specific differences; but this would be 



52 The Flood. 

a mere theoretical solution of a difficulty which seems 
to have far deeper meaning, and to bear directly upon 
the question of the first origin of organized beings. 

The circumstances under which these remains are 
found admit of no doubt but the animals from which 
they are derived existed in North America long be- 
fore this continent was settled by the white race of 
men, together with animals which to this day are com- 
mon in the same localities, such as the deer, the musk- 
rat, the opossum, and others only now found in South 
America, such as the tapir. This shows beyond the 
possibility of a controversy that animals which cannot 
be distinguished from one another may originate in- 
dependently in different fauna; and I take it that the 
facts you have brought together are a satisfactory 
proof that horses, sheep, bulls, and hogs, not distin- 
guishable at present from the domesticated species, 
were called into existence upon the continent of North 
America prior to the coming of the white race to these 
parts, and that they had already disappeared here when 
the new-comers set foot upon this continent; but the 
presence of tapir teeth among the rest shows also that 
a genus peculiar to South America and the Sunda Is- 
lands existed in North America in those days, and that 
its representatives of that period are not distinguisha- 
ble from the South American species. 

It would be desirable at this stage of the inquiry to 
compare your tapir teeth with those of the species from 



The Ashley Beds. 53 

Central America, which is considered distinct from the 
Brazilian species. This circumstance leads naturally to 
the question of the specific identity of all these ani- 
mals with those now living in the same locality, and 
with the domesticated species. And here I confess the 
difficulty to be almost insuperable, or at least hardly 
approachable in the present state of our science, when 
the views of naturalists are so divided as to what are 
species among the genera bos, ovis, capra. For myself, 
I entertain doubt respecting the unity of origin of the 
domesticated horses. But whatever may be the final re- 
sult of this inquiry, this much is already established by 
the fossils you have collected: that horses, hogs, bulls, 
and sheep were among the native animals of North 
America, as early as the common American deer, the 
opossum, the beaver, the muskrat, etc. What remains 
to be settled respecting their specific identity is involved 
in the controversy now carried on between naturalists 
who admit specific distinctions upon a very wide range 
of differences and those who limit them withinnarrow 
boundaries. But the final solution of this point can in 
no way lessen the interest of your discoveries. 

Should you publish anything upon the subject, let 
me have your notice, for I am deeply interested in the 
subject, as I always shall be in everything you do. 

Ever truly your friend, L. Agassiz. 1 

1 " Postpliocene Fossils of South Carolina," by F. S. Holmes: In- 
troduction, page x. 



54 The Flood. 

The professor's doubts as to the unity of 
origin of the domesticated horses can have 
but one solution, namely, the theory of 
several distinct creations, which he seems 
eventually to have adopted. But is not 
this a violent supposition? Does it not 
conflict with that economy of divine power 
everywhere recorded in the Scripture his- 
tory of God's dealing with man? Does not 
this theory of distinct geographical crea- 
tions, of the same genera, amount almost to 
a reductio ad absurdum, in favor of the truth 
of the Mosaic account of a universal flood, 
and of the miraculous preservation by the 
ark of those air-breathing creatures which 
we now have in both hemispheres ? It must 
not be overlooked that this discovery of 
the fossil deposit of the Ashley beds, and 
not all those found in other places, im- 
pressed him so deeply. The truth is, they 
solve the great problem as to the history of 
creation, of the flood, and of the ark of 
Noah, given in Genesis. 



The A shley Beds. 55 

Professor Joseph Leidy, of Philadelphia, 
in his "Description of Vertebrate Fossils" 
found on the shores of the Ashley River, or 
its vicinity, about ten miles above Charles- 
ton, S. C, says of the horse: 

It appears to be quite well authenticated that the 
horse, now so extensively distributed, both in a wild 
and domestic condition, throughout North and South 
America, did not inhabit these continents at the time 
of their discovery by Europeans. Coupling this fact 
with the circumstance that in many instances fossils 
may become accidental occupants of earlier geologi- 
cal formations than those to which they actually be- 
long, we should require strong evidence before it is 
admitted that species of the horse belonged to the an- 
cient fauna of the western world. At the present time 
such evidence is not only ample for the purpose, but actu- 
ally indicates that more equine animals formerly lived in 
North America than in any other portion of the earth, 
so far as known. Remains of the horse, discovered in 
Brazil, Buenos Ayres, and Chili, have been indicated by 
Dr. Lund, Professor Owen, M. Weddell, and M. Gervais. 
These remains exhibit no well- marked characters dis- 
tinguishing them from corresponding portions of the 
skeleton of the domestic horse, and it is uncertain 
whether they are referable to one or more species. 1 

1 " Postpliocene Fossils," p. ioo. 



56 The Flood. 

LETTER FROM DR. WIGHTMAN. 

Washington, D. C, 916 Mass. Ave., N. W., 

January 11, 1892. 

Bishop J. C. Keener, D.D. — My dear Bishop: At 
your request I send a short sketch of the phosphate 
beds that lie around Charleston, S. C. These myste- 
rious volumes of dry bones have never yet been careful- 
ly studied. The history of the human race may be in- 
volved in this uninterpreted book of nature. During 
my long pastorate in Charleston I had the pleasure of 
an intimate friendship with Professor F. S. Holmes, 
of the Charleston College. He was the discoverer of 
these vast phosphate lands. He was a Christian gen- 
tleman of high social standing and a member of the 
Episcopal Church. During frequent visits to the col- 
lege museum he took pleasure in showing me a great 
variety of fossils taken from the bed of the Ashley 
River, near the city. The museum is rich in these 
prehistoric remains, both of fish and land animals, an- 
tedating the introduction of man. They are found 
mingled in the same beds with fossil deposits of ani- 
mals of the present era. The ichthyosaurus mingles 
his bones with those of the horse, the mastodon with 
the deer, the shark and sea monsters more than thirty- 
five feet long lie side by side with animals common to 
our day. This vast bed is more than a hundred miles 
long, and extends inward from the seacoast about 
fifty miles. It is a great cemetery of the world, in 



The Ashley Beds. 57 

which almost every extinct and living species of land 
and marine animals lies entombed on a common level 
in strata varying in thickness from a few inches to 
several feet Millions of tons of these bones have 
been shipped. Professor Holmes has given a full de- 
scription of these beds in his history of the phosphate 
discovery, published at Charleston. Professor Louis 
Agassiz, the distinguished naturalist, had maintained 
that the horse was of Asiatic origin up to the time 
of visiting these beds. Professor Holmes told me that 
Agassiz was very much excited when he saw the 
old horse teeth. He spread them on the floor and 
spent almost the entire night in making comparisons. 
He wrote a letter to Professor Holmes, in which he 
said, in substance, that these old bones had confused 
his theory and well-nigh set him crazy with surprise. 
His letter was published in the Charleston Courier 
about the year 1854. Professor Lyle and Dr. Morton 
accompanied Dr. Holmes on a visit to the Ashley 
beds, and with their own pick took horse teeth from 
the black seam of fossil running along the bank of the 
river about the height of a man's head above the wa- 
ter line. Professor Holmes showed me at the mu- 
seum a gigantic human thigh bone, three inches lon- 
ger than the average bone of the same kind. It was 
said to have been taken from these beds, but of the 
precise spot the professor was not informed. It was a 
remarkable fossil. 



58 The Flood. 

These vast deposits open a new field of ethnolog- 
ical inquiry. No theory yet advanced is satisfactory. 
Some suppose these beds to have been salt licks, or 
peat beds, or fresh-water lakes, and that large num- 
bers of land animals perished there during the ages. 
At the occurrence of the Noachian flood this charnel- 
house invited to the spot all sorts of predatory marine 
animals, and the sudden fall of the water left the sea 
monsters to perish in the basin with the remains of the 
land animals. There is a difficulty in the theory, as the 
country abounds in salt licks and water courses far up 
from the seacoast to the mountains, so that animals 
need not resort to these beds for a supply of salt or wa- 
ter. Besides, the remains of land animals that never 
herd together and have no sympathy for each other 
are found side by side in this vast cemetery, as if 
driven together by some external terror. It is to be 
hoped that a scientific ethnological investigation will 
interpret this " valley of dry bones," and throw light 
upon the chronology of the human race. 

With much respect, yours, 

John T. Wightman, 
Pastor of Mount Vernon Place Methodist Episcopal Church, South, 
Washington, D. C. 



VII. 

Fossil Contents of the Ashley Beds. 

The f ollowing fossils, with phosphate nod- 
ules and bowlders, from the beds of the Ash- 
ley, were on exhibition in the South Carolina 
Department of the New Orleans Exposition 
of 1884, from the collection of Major E. 
Willis, of Charleston: 

Phosphate Nodules. Heads of Crocodilians. 

Phosphate Bowlders. Teeth of Crocodilians. 

Stratified Phosphate Rock. Ribs of Crocodilians. 

Teeth of the Elephant. Jawbone of Deer. 

Bones of the Elephant. Jawbone of Deer, with 

Tail Bones of the Elephant. Teeth. 

Ear Bones of the Elephant. Horns of Deer. 

Tusk of the Elephant. Coprolites of the Ichthyo- 

Teeth of the Mastodon. saurus. 

Vertebrae of the Mastodon. Ribs of Cetacean. 

Bones of the Mastodon. Jaws of Cetacean. 

Skull of the Whale. Skull of Cetacean. 

Ear Bones of the Whale. Fossil Shrimp. 

Teeth of the Whale. Jaws of Alligator. 

Ribs of Manatus. Jaws of Alligator, with 

Bones of Manatus. Teeth. 

Skull of Manatus. Ribs of Alligator. 

(6.) 



62 



The Flood. 



Leg Bones of Camel. 

Bones of Camel. 

Teeth of Tapir. 

Teeth of Porpoise. 

Jawof Porpoise,with Teeth. 

Skull of Porpoise. 

Fossil Barnacle, small and 
large. 

Proroziphius Macrops 
(Leidy). 

Teeth of Zeuglodon. 

Teeth of Walrus. 

Teeth of Plesiosaurus. 

Teeth of Ichthyosaurus. 

Teeth of Beaver. 

Bones of Beaver. 

Bones and Teeth of Musk- 
rat. 

Teeth of the Phocodon. 

Vertebra of the Phocodon. 

Ribs of the Phocodon. 

Teeth of the Mylodon. 

Vertebra of the Mylodon. 

Spines of Giant Fish. 

Teeth of the Monkey 
Family. 

Bones of the Monkey 
Family. 



Teeth of the Peccary. 
Jaws of Clam Cracker, 

Myliobates Holmesei. 
Cast of Conchs. 
Cast of Periwinkle. 
Skull of Saurian. 
Ribs of Saurian. 
Teeth of Saurian. 
Tail Bone of Saurian. 
Leg Bone of Bison, 
Ribs of Bison. 
Indian Pottery. 
Indian Arrowheads. 
Indian Jaw, with Teeth. 
Indian Weights (Brass). 
Teeth of Lamna Sharks. 
Teeth of Carcharodon 

Sharks. 
Teeth of Tiger Shark. 
Teeth of Sand Shark. 
Teeth of Man-eating 

Shark. 
Teeth of Spotted Shark. 
Vertebra of Shark. 
Ear Bones of Shark. 
Carcharias Shark. 
Galeocerdo Shark. 
Skull of Dolphin. 



Fossil Contents, 



63 



Vertebra of Dolphin. 

Tail Bone of Dolphin. 

Teeth of Sting Ray. 

Spine of Sting Raj. 

Sting Ray. 

Teeth of extinct species of 
Horse. 

Tibia of extinct species of 
Horse. 

Vertebrae of Saurians. 

Vertebrae of Balaena. 

Sections of Turtle Shell. 

Bones of Turtle. 

Teeth of Reptiles. 

Jaws, with Teeth, of Rep- 
tiles. 

Clams. 

Clam Shells. 

Fossil Oysters. 

Hydrocherus, Molar, low- 
er jaw. 

Coral Cast, in Marl. 



Costal Plate Turtle. 
Jaw of Swordfish. 
Teeth of Raccoon. 
Teeth of Opossum. 
Teeth and Bones of Rab- 
bit. 
Bones of Garfish. 
Manatus Antiguus. 
Mylcdon. 
Megatherium. 
Hippotherium Venustum. 
Toredo Cell. 
Trigoma Clareldata. 
Teeth of Muskrat. 
Pen of Cuttlefish. 
Horn of Elk. 
Fossil Cocoanut. 
Femora of Monkey. 
Palate of Toad. 
Bones of Iguanodon. 
Bones of Hadrosaurus. 
Teeth of Megatherium. 



VIII. 
The Great Wall Built by God. 

In the July number of the Edinburgh 
Review of 1892, a writer has set forth the 
condition of America at the time of its dis- 
covery. In it he presents the theory that 
"the glacial epoch swept away at least a 
dozen species of great mammals— the ele- 
phant, the mammoth, the megatherium, 
the rhinoceros, and others — which, until 
then, roamed the continent in exuberant 
vitality." For some unexplained reason, 
he adds, "the almshouse of the tropics 
failed to rescue and maintain them when a 
stress of circumstances arose in the temper- 
ate zone." This "stress of circumstances" 
is a rather mild allusion to the all-devour- 
ing catastrophe of the flood. As for that 
ghastly conceit of a "glacial epoch" which 
is so often paraded, we have no answer 
only its reference to Sir Henry Howarth's 

(64) 



Great Wall Built by God. 65 

recent work, and his views of this Deus ex 
machina of modern geologists, page 344. 
We quote still further from this article, in 
evidence of the biological history of Amer- 
ica, as usually held by the scientific world ; 
and to show how completely these general- 
izing periods have been crushed out by the 
discovering of the Ashley beds. The writer 
continues : 

The almost total absence of domesticated animals 
from aboriginal America illustrates its zoological short- 
comings. For man's selection implies superiority. 
The organisms intimately associated with him must 
possess something of the plasticity by which his own 
organism is preeminently distinguished. They must 
be capable of departing from the groove of wild na- 
ture, of meeting the exigencies of culture, of respond- 
ing to demands for service. Native in a country with- 
out oxen, asses, sheep, horses, goats, or pigs, the red 
Indian was limited to the companionship of the dog, as 
represented by the shabby curs that snarled around Iro- 
quois and Ojibbewa wigwams. The Aztec race, not- 
withstanding their highly wrought existence, were in 
this respect no more than on a level with the cave- 
dwellers of the old world. 

These views of the writer are valuable 



66 The Flood. 

as showing a necessary connection between 
man and the domestic animals; that they 
aid him in elevating his pursuits, so that he 
becomes a keeper of flocks and herds, and 
not merely a hunter or warrior. It is also 
an argument for the presence of cultivated 
man on this continent; not "paleolithic' 
or "neolithic" man, with intervening cata- 
clysm, or "prehistoric' 3 man, but simply 
man as he was originally when surrounded 
with all the aids and companions of crea- 
ture life needful to his instruction, assist- 
ance, and pleasure. 

The evidences of man as contempora- 
neous with all other animal life are abun- 
dant in the eastern hemisphere; all which 
has been set at rest by Professor Prest- 
wich, of England, who found axes in un- 
disturbed deposit, associated with the bones 
of the great mammifers. And Sir Charles 
Lyell, on his fourth visit to America, called 
attention to the possibility of man and the 
extinct animals having been contemporary; 



Great Wall Built by God. 67 

that he was shown the bone of a man 
found in a lake at the foot of a cliff in Mis- 
sissippi, near Natchez, two feet below the 
skeleton of the megalonyx and other extinct 
quadrupeds. 

In the museum of the American Philosophic So- 
ciety of Philadelphia, Lyell was shown a block of 
limestone from Santas, Brazil, obtained by Captain 
Elliott, of the United States Navy, which contained a 
human skull, teeth, and other bones, together with frag- 
ments of shells, some of them retaining a portion of 
their color. Remains of several hundreds of other 
human skeletons, imbedded in a similar calcareous 
trefa, were dug out at the same place. 1 

It is enough to say that evidence of this 
kind is superabundant and easily obtained. 
But had these evidences of contemporary 
existence only been found scattered over 
Europe, it would have been difficult to show 
that their fossilization occurred at one and 
the same time. The argument would have 
been that the process is going on always, 
at one place or another; and so all com- 

1 Lyell , s Journey, II. 200. 



68 The Flood. 

parison as to change of animal structure 
would have been virtually defeated. Great 
stretches of time are demanded by " evolu- 
tion ?: * to sustain its theories of gradual se- 
lection. These stretches are now afforded 
without interruption by the western hemi- 
sphere, so far as fossils of three thousand 
four hundred years can afford them. They 
can, at least, show if any change has taken 
place in mollusk or muskrat, in ox or man, 
in deer or beaver, in horse or sheep, in goat 
or pig, in all that time. But above all, 
they show that the entire work of turning 
organic substance into stone was completed 
at the instant when the whole fauna of the 
Americas was destroyed. 

The effect of the flood in America there- 
fore set up a barrier against all theories of 
evolution, wholly impassable — a chasm in 
the process of thirty-four centuries. Such 
a gap amounts to an absolute extinction of 
all life forces back of it. Another limita- 
tion equally weighty was that in this fossil- 



Great Wall Built by God. 69 

izing there was included every species of 
life that inhabited either land or water. 
The process changes the substance upon 
which it acts by displacing it with either 
silica or lime, by which all animal or insect 
or mollusk life, bone, shell, or flesh, be- 
comes stone. It literally turns an animal 
into its own gravestone. The most delicate 
organism is transubstantiated by it with- 
out the slightest injury to its form, and so 
quickly that the life expression is secured 
before death sets in. The lens of an eve 

ml 

has been found perfectly fossilized, which 
existed in the very lowest formation, as ge- 
ologists say, of articulate, organic structure, 
that of the trilobite. 

It operates as freely upon whales and 
other creatures that live in the sea. Of 
the shellfish now living, and which 
are confined to the waters of the At- 
lantic, along the Carolinas, ninety-seven 
per cent, are found fossilized ; two per 
cent, have been found in the West India 



70 The Flood. 

waters, and one per cent, remain as yet 
unfound. 

In the Ashley beds are the teeth of the 
sperm whale, exactly like those now living 
in the Arctic Ocean. The facts show that 
of animals inhabiting land there are many 
more species fossilized than now exist, and 
all that now exist have been fossilized. The 
reader may have supposed that the marvelous 
process was only occasional, and occurred 
at intervals here and there ; whereas it was 
as broad as the various species of created 
life, and occurred but once by the mysteri- 
ous agencies that were let loose at the one 
great flood. 

This imperishable record which God 
himself has set up of all his work, of all 
the creatures he had made, constitutes a 
wall of stone as high as the peaks of the 
mountains and as deep as the sea-gash be- 
tween them, which cannot be passed by or 
dismissed or dissipated by any mere specu- 
lative thought of men. Jehovah has writ- 



Great Wall Built by God. 71 

ten the history of the creation in stone and 
stored it away in the earth, to be discov- 
ered by man in the roll of the ages, to con- 
firm the truth of his word and the cosmog- 
ony of Moses. 

We are largely indebted to these flinty 
records for our knowledge of the wealth of 
creation. But for them we should never 
have conceived of the megatherium, of 
the myriads of herds of mammoths, of the 
countless herds of cattle that once ranged 
the plains of earth from the Andes to the 
Straits of Magellan, from the Rocky Moun- 
tains to Behring Strait, from the Pyrenees 
to the Steppes of Siberia, from the Hima- 
layas of Asia to the lakes and mountains 
of Africa. 

As they reveal to us the affluence of the 
creative days, so do they confirm the one 
storm of death that by the fiat of God 
ingulfed the whole earth. They separate 
by death as well as by stone all that was 
before the deluge from all that came after. 



72 The Flood. 

These fossils run back to the beginning. 
They give the identical mold of creatures 
fresh from the shaping hand of the Creator. 
They tell what the elephant was when first 
made, so that if there has been any change 
in its form by any force since, it can now 
be easily ascertained. And if the theory 
be correct that a break in the current of an- 
imal life is always accompanied by a break 
in the succession of rocks, then there has 
never been but one; for in animal life there 
has been but the one — at the flood. A break 
in the current, but none in their original 
forms, which puts an end to those incalcu- 
lable ages between species and species; for 
as the modification itself disappears, the pe- 
riods demanded for it disappear also. This 
stony structure built of God, high as the 
clouds, deep as the sea, broad as the earth, 
cannot be undermined, pierced, or scaled by 
the theories of men, but abides in its integri- 
ty as the rock of Horeb and as the tables of 
the law written by the finger of God. 



IX. 

The Fossil Barrier. 

The provisions for making a permanent 
record of all the fauna which perished in 
the catastrophe of the flood is one of the 
great facts brought out by the science of 
geology. Such a provision existed for all 
creatures from the mollusca to the mam- 
moth. In the extensive beds of gypsum 
under Paris, and in the yet more extensive 
beds of phosphate of lime in South Caro- 
lina, immeasurable teeth and bones of ma- 
rine and land animals, and myriads of mol- 
lusca, of fresh and salt water, have been 
laid away in fossil by the Creator, that 
their record might be read by future gener- 
ations of men as cuneiform slabs were de- 
posited by kings in the chambers of Baby- 
lon. They constitute not only a history of 
all that perished, but of all that were cre- 
ated. Many of these creatures perished 

(73) 



74 The Flood. 

not to be reproduced: animals of terrible 
strength and size, and millions of tiny shell- 
fish, a thousand to a grain, with their num- 
berless varieties, in which the creative en- 
ergy seemed to disport in the affluence of 
its resources. 

The variety of organic substance then, 
as now, displayed the handiwork of God; 
so, too, did the vast sum of inorganic mat- 
ter, in the heaven above and the earth be- 
neath. He who made all contemplates the 
work of each day, with its infinite distinct- 
iveness and harmony — 

The fair music that creatures made, 
In perfect diapason — 

as necessary to the one Sabbath as a divine 
rest. 

At the flood every species of every class 
of living creature was fossilized and its re- 
mains distributed over the plains, upon the 
hills, and in the tops of the mountains, 
in evidence of what the earth was. The 
distinctness of species, classes, and tribes 



The Fossil Barrier. 75 

was maintained in death as in life. Fos- 
sils give no witness to theories of selection 
and transition. Each creature in its sphere 
from the first gave its own statement of or- 
ganic life. There were no earlier, no later; 
the trilobite, with his eight hundred distinct 
lenses, gave as good evidence of the pres- 
ence of light, in his narrow circuit, as the 
large-eyed saurian that ranged the sea- 
depths for his food. However connect- 
ed by a common vitality, the Creator has 
assigned to each of them its own place. 
There were many forms with the antedi- 
luvians which we have not, but since the 
flood there have been no additions to the 
world's fauna. In this all things continue 
as they were. We have the unrelenting 
record of fossil-bearing rocks, and of the 
Ashley beds, going back to the first hour 
of organic and inorganic structure. Nor 
can the endless cycles of the bit-by-bit 
theory of Lyell show aught to the contrary. 
Surely, if evolution had the least showing 



76 The Flood. 

in these records, it would be able, among 
the countless cast-iron facts, to bring forth 
some slight vesicle, some tiny shell un- 
known to the ancients, of some new spe- 
cies, toward the solution of the uniformita- 
rian problem. 

Shells, and particularly marine shells, may be called 
the time-medals of creation. Their comparative inde- 
structibility, and the fact that the element in which their 
inmates live, which preserves their habitation when 
they die, make it certain that in them geology keeps 
her oldest, most complete, and most authentic record. 
(Argyll.) 

Organized fossils are to the naturalist as coin to the 
antiquary ; they are the antiquities of the earth. (Wil- 
liam Smith.) 

According to MM. Agassiz and D'Orbigny, all, or 
nearly all, the fossils of each formation are peculiar, 
very few species being supposed to have survived 
from one period to another. (Woodward.) 

Yet in these the Creator has preserved 
the statement of mollusk life as it existed in 
the myriad varieties at the first. They are 
as distinct in their habitation now as they 
were then; most of them identical with 



The Fossil Barrier. 77 

those that now live. Many have perished, 
but no new ones appear; not the shell, but 
the mollusk, has disappeared. Its life was 
limited ; while it lived it only expressed the 
law of its life in the shaping of its dwelling. 
As a plant rounds its life into a fig, or a 
thistle, or a grape, but does not change the 
one into the other, so the univalve did not 
change into the bivalve, nor did one spe- 
cies invade the lines assigned to another. 
The tract upon which it must have moved, 
if passing its boundaries, has never yet 
been discovered; the link of transition is 
wanting in all these uncounted forms. The 
Creator said, not only to the ocean, but to 
each creature in it, " Hitherto shalt thou 
come, but no further." 

It is as reasonable to suppose that a bi- 
valve would gradually evolve into a whale as 
that an iguanodon would eventually come to 
be a member of the Royal Society. 

Of nine hundred and fifty-seven species of shell 
fossils that occur along the Atlantic slope, there are 



f /8 The Flood. 

two hundred and eleven species that are in existence 
at the present time. Of the seven hundred and sixty- 
six species wanting, one should never have been 
known but for the fossilizing process passed upon 
them. The number of living and fossil species of 
each genus of mollusca in the world, so far as ascer- 
tained, are eighteen thousand five hundred and sixty- 
eight fossil, and twenty thousand five hundred and 
two living; so that a large part of the living are also 
fossilized. (Woodward.) 

If we have all organic life, as now seen, 
stereotyped in these fossil records, is it likely 
that there exists any law of development? 
A force which claims to have existed latent 
for so long a period may not be relied upon 
for new forms in future. And yet there 
are theorists who say it will revive some of 
these days. The bow on the clouds, which 
secures us against another flood, is equally 
a security against any, the least, process of 
evolution. 

The almost inconceivable suddenness of 
fossilization is admirably stated by Buck- 
land (Bridgewater Treatise, page 233). In 
speaking of the fossil sepia, he says: 



The Fossil Barrier. 79 

I might register the proofs of instantaneous death 
detected in these ink-bags, for they contain the fluid 
which the living sepia emits in the moment of alarm; 
and might detail further evidence of their immediate 
burial, in the retention of the forms of these distend- 
ed membranes, since they would speedily have de- 
cayed, and have spilled their ink, had they been ex- 
posed but a few hours to decomposition in the water. 
The animals, therefore, must have died suddenly 
and been quickly buried in the sediment that formed 
the strata, in which their petrified ink and ink-bags 
are thus preserved. And [he adds in a note] we have 
elsewhere applied this line of argument to prove the 
sudden destruction and burial of saurians, whose skel- 
etons we find in the lias that contains the pens and 
ink-bags of loligo. 

His proofs go on the supposition that 
petrefaction was due to muddy invasions 
that destroyed and buried suddenly the 
creatures inhabiting the waters at the time 
of their arrival. This may have been, but 
the probabilities are that a much more 
rapid agent was employed in the combined 
work of destruction and fossilization, name- 
ly, that of electricity, which electrotyped 
the very act, as well as figure, of the crea- 



80 The Flood. 

ture destroyed. The finest lines of plants, 
shells, and insect life preserved show that 
an agent was at work which searched ev- 
ery cubic inch of sea and land in carrying 
out and in recording the death sentence 
that had gone forth against the world that 
was. Water is so excellent a conductor that 
the ocean at the flood must have glowed as a 
summer sea at night with electric fire. 



X. 
The Horse and the Flood, 

The place which the fossil remains of 
the horse occupy in these Ashley beds is in 
company with the teeth and bones of extinct 
fishes, saurians, and mammals; also with 
overlying and underlying marl beds con- 
taining more than two hundred varieties of 
fossil shells — of which a large per cent, are 
still existing. 

Millions of horse teeth are in these beds. 
They are the ordinary teeth of the horse, 
only they differ in the enamel of the crown 
of the tooth. It is much more complex in 
its folds. This can be seen at a glance. 
It leaves no room for " accidental occu- 
pancy," or for " fluvial changes and cur- 
rents"; they are found in situ. By their 
very great quantity, the range of the horse 
is shown to have been equal to that of any 
: (81) 



82 The Flood. 

other animal. The continent must have 
abounded in horses. 

That no horses remained in America up 
to the time of its discovery by the Spaniards 
is fully established; and that the present 
herds were introduced by the Spanish dis- 
coverers is equally so. This fact, there- 
fore, proves that the catastrophe which 
destroyed the horse in the region of South 
Carolina extended throughout the two Amer- 
icas. 

The high organization of the horse brings 
it to the very latest "formation" of the 
Quaternary age; it is only less than that of 
man. Indeed, if any animal was ever made 
for man, it is the horse. It shares with man 
in all the conditions of his labor, his adven- 
tures, or his pleasures. Whether in peace or 
war, the horse is equally available for man's 
uses. 

Yet in these beds the horse is of no later 
period than those gigantic creatures of sea 
and land which by theory have been placed 



The Horse and the Flood. 83 



o 



at the earliest times of the Cenozoic age. 
So the horse brings down to a very recent 
period all those extinct creatures which the 
scientific imagination has worked up into an 
evolutionary growth of millions of years. 
There are certainty two sides to this fact: 
either the mammalia are as recent as the 
horse, or the horse is as old as the extinct 
mammalia. If, however, the theory of Dar- 
win be taken, we ask, How is it that animals 
so near in death were millions of years apart 
in life? There are as many fossils of one as 
of the other — equally as well preserved ; in 
fact, the horse teeth showing a longer burial 
than those of the gigantic shark. The truth 
is, one hour made them, one hour destroyed 
them, and the one flood covered them. 

With these deductions, w r hich are not 
forced, we can appreciate the fact that 
Professor Agassiz spent the whole night 
over a tray of horse teeth, carefully exam- 
ining their crowns, and in the morning ex- 
claimed to Professor Holmes, "These old 



84 The Flood. 

bones have nearly made me crazy ; they have 
destroyed the work of my life! " He saw 
rightly that they were thoroughly fossilized, 
and of antediluvian origin. 

If all horses were destroyed in America, 
those of Europe and those of Asia doubtless 
shared the same fate. The horse therefore 
began a second line of production in cen- 
tral Asia, where the ark rested ; and thence 
made its way to Arabia; thence to Spain. 
From Spain it was replanted in Mexico, and 
thence spread over the whole American con- 
tinent, as at this day. The horse was here 
before the flood for sixteen hundred years ; 
it has been here since not yet five hundred 
years. If all the genus had not been de- 
stroyed in America, this continent would 
have been a center of its reproduction as 
well as Asia, 



XL 
Extent of Changes Wrought by the Flood, 

It seems to have been the purpose of the 
Creator to give everything a fresh start after 
the flood; to change the fauna and flora, the 
metallic veins, the order of strata, the sys- 
tem of rivers, water channels, and thermal 
lines : all underwent a simultaneous recon- 
struction, adapted to the change wrought in 
the fortunes and constitution of man. 

If the degree of depression was sufficient 
to cover this continent with water, it is 
not merely probable, but certain, that the 
same relative height of water would obtain 
throughout the globe; water being a fixed 
quantity, contractions of the land would be 
proportionally distributed. 

The exact description in the Pentateuch 
of the flood gives its daily increase for forty 
days, until it covered the tops of the moun- 
tains, (i) " The waters increased and bare 

(85) 



86 The Flood. 

up the ark." (2) "The waters prevailed 
and were increased greatly," and (3) " the 
ark w r ent upon the face of the waters." 
(4) t6 Fifteen cubits upward did the waters 
prevail, and the mountains were covered." 
One hundred and fifty days they stood at 
this height. After that the fountains of the 
deep and the windows of heaven were 
stopped, and the rain from heaven was re- 
strained. On the seventeenth day of the 
seventh month the ark rested upon the 
mountain of Ararat; and the waters de- 
creased continually until the tenth month. 
On the first day of the tenth month "the 
tops of the mountains were seen." At the 
end of forty days Noah opened the window 
of the ark, and sent forth a raven: then he 
sent a dove to see if the waters had abated 
to any extent; then, after seven days, he 
sent forth the dove again. And the dove 
came in to him in the evening, and lo, in 
her mouth was an olive leaf plucked off! 
He stayed yet other seven days, and sent 



Extent of Changes Wrought. 87 

forth the dove, which returned not again 
to him any more. "In the six hundred 
and first year of Noah, on the first day of 
the first month, the waters were dried up 
from off the face of the earth. And Noah 
removed the covering of the ark, and looked, 
and behold, the face of the ground was dry." 
"And in the second month, the twenty-sev- 
enth day of the month, was the earth dried " ; 
so that with safety Noah could go forth of 
the ark. One cannot conceive of anything 
more gradual than the rise and the fall of 
the waters; nor of a more minute record. 
It is not unlike the log of a voyage in its 
accurate dates and observations. In all the 
Scriptures there is nothing more historical 
and actual on its face than this record. 

The hilltops of the earth, and the moun- 
tain tops of its continents, confirm to this 
day the truthfulness of these Scriptures. 
The abundance of fossil seashells, and fos- 
sil bones and teeth of marine monsters, scat- 
tered over all places, heights, and wastes, 
6 



88 The Flood. 

mingled with those of the land, repeat the 
story of the flood, which is told with such 
graphic detail by Moses. The duke of 
Argyll, in speaking of the hills of the 
Snowden Range, says: " Old ocean has 
been there, and he has been there very 
lately. The Mael Trefantop, in North 
Wales, is covered with marine gravel, one 
thousand one hundred and thirty feet above 
the level of the sea; containing shells in 
abundance, all of existing species. Gravels 
with three hundred kinds of existing shells 
are piled up at elevations of two thousand 
four hundred feet above the Mediterranean 
in Calabria. Charles Darwin recognized 
the same phenomena on the vast continent 
of South America: the massive marine 
gravels of Patagonia — the recency of them; 
and the correlative destruction of the great 
mammalia. The geologists of North Amer- 
ica report similar facts. 

" ' Old implements ' have intellectually a 
double edge. They may serve to establish 



Extent of Changes Wrought. 89 

the extreme recency of some great convul- 
sion, far more than they tend to prove the 
extreme antiquity of the creatures affected 
by it." With an instinctive dread of this 
alternative, "vigorous attempts have been 
made to treat all implements bearing gravels 
as fluvialite — the work of existing rivers and 
the spoil of existing watersheds. But human 
implements have now been found abundant- 
ly in gravels which must have been at least 
spread and redistributed, not by rivers, but 
by the sea." "A depression of the land 
has taken place, according to Professor 
Prestwich, in England, great enough to 
swamp not only the greater part of Europe, 
but the greater part of the habitations of 
man all over the globe." 

"Nothing can be more certain than that 
nature did not generate itself. The things 
which are seen were certainty not made of 
things that do appear. . . . What we call 
nature — ourselves included — must have had 
an origin and a cause. These are the ob- 



go The Flood. 

jects of religion. Of two things we may- 
be sure about theology: first, that there 
must be facts concerning it; secondly, that 
these facts must be the supreme facts with 
•which we have to do. They may or they 
may not be accessible to us, but they must 
exist as realities — with all their dynamic ap- 
paratus, and with all their corresponding 
laws/' (Argyll.) He adds: "No man, 
however scientific, can be allowed to brow- 
beat our reason in coming to those conclu- 
sions which men of even ordinary under- 
standing are perfectly competent to draw 
from facts which others have ascertained/ ' 



XII. 

The MoIIusca and the Flood, 

In these Ashley beds there are mollusea 
that belong to the earliest strata of the 
Tertiary period — the polyparia, the brach- 
iopoda, the bryozoa, etc. ; yet side by 
side with them are the teeth and bones 
of the sheep, the horse, the deer, and the 
hog. The mollusk is no older than the 
horse; the deer as perfect as the nautilus; 
the ovis ammen as old as the chambered shell 
of the ammonite. If fossil shells are the 
time-medals of geology, they report the age 
of the dinotherium, the megatherium, to be 
as old as that of any mollusk. The soft 
fleshly animal, with its lamellated fringe 
and double shell, has resisted the flow of 
ages better than the large -boned megalo- 
saurus, but no better than the muskrat or 
the beaver. Nor do the great sharks or 
saurians escape the storms of time any 

(91) 



92 The Flood. 

better than the domestic animals: all have 
been fossilized, but the feeble creatures re- 
main, while the monsters have left us only 
their tombstones to tell the story of their 
having once lived. 

The number of species has dwindled per- 
ceptibly, while there has been no improve- 
ment in the organic structure. It is as per- 
fect in the Cer-vus Virgiannis as in the Meg- 
atherium Mirabile. In the Equus Fraternus 
and Elephas Americanus we have as high 
and perfect structure as ever has been found 
in animal life. Yet these lie in the same bed 
with shells that are only one remove from the 
jellyfish. 

Judging from the fossils of the Pliocene 
and Postpliocene beds at the Ashley River, 
so vast in number, no form of life is older 
than any other form, whether articulate or 
inarticulate; they all began and all ended 
together. Of these forms, if any now live, 
they revived elsewhere. These all died 
quickly and at once. The hand that made 



The Mollusca. 93 

them fossilized them, or else we should 
never have known of them. 

In Maryland and Virginia, three hundred 
and forty-four species of fossil shells, in 
beds overlying the Eocene marl, were ex- 
amined by M. Conrad, and he determined 
that fourteen per cent, were of living spe- 
cies. These beds were referred to the 
Miocene period of the Tertiary. In the 
final report on the geology of South Caro- 
lina, made in 1846, these beds were re- 
ferred to the Pliocene period, a newer di- 
vision of the Tertiary. Two hundred and 
three species are figured and described 
in "The Pliocene Fossils of South Car- 
olina," published in 1857 by Professor 
M. Tuomey, of the University of Alaba- 
ma, and Professor F. S. Holmes, of the 
College of Charleston, S. C. The fol- 
lowing tabular statement is presented in 
this admirable work, published under the 
auspices of the state of South Carolina, of 
the extinct and recent species found in the 



94 The Flood. 

beds of New Jersey, Virginia, North and 
South Carolina: 

New Jersey, of 170 species, 22 are recent=i3 per 
cent. Virginia, of 160 species, 29 are recent=i8 per 
cent. North Carolina, of 80 species, 27 are recent= 
34 per cent South Carolina, of 203 species, 85 are re- 
cent=42 per cent. 

Of these 957 species of fossilized shells, 
211 species are known to be recent. "Re- 
cent" does not mean of later origin than the 
rest of the 957. They are all of the same 
age. There is not a scintilla of evidence 
to the contrary. All were fossilized at the 
same time, lay in the same bed. But 746 
are only in fossil. But for the fossilizing 
process they would have perished histor- 
ically as well as vitally. The 211 are not 
descendants or outcomes of the 746 dead 
mollusks. They were living together; only 
the 746 disappeared, and 211 remain. 

The varieties of mollusca are not so 
many as at first; there has been a very 
marked decrease. Nor is there any evi- 



The Mollusca. 95 

dence of any change in those that remain 
that would indicate improvement. They 
therefore represent nothing but themselves. 
Time has not changed them for the better 
or the worse. It is a common inference 
that a fossil must of necessity be older than 
any living forms. The nautilus is living, but 
it is fossilized, and is found in formations 
* of every age. We know all that there was 
in this department of creative power. The 
record remains to us. The Creator has seen 
fit to write the forms, if not the names, of 
his earliest creatures upon imperishable 
tablets. With this record before us, we may 
venture to affirm that every species of crea- 
ture has been fossilized that ever was created. 
The remains found in Europe, Asia, Afri- 
rica, and America fully bear out this state- 
ment. The idea that only extinct creatures 
have been let into the rock is a mistake. 
The Ashley beds abound in fossil teeth and 
bones of domestic animals, all the animals 
that keep near man and were especially 



96 The Flood. 

created for his comfort. They lie side by 
side with those fearful creatures which 
were made to keep down an overproduc- 
tion of life — the police of the land and of 
the sea. 

The attempt to prove that fossilizing still 
goes on is a failure. There may be a de- 
posit, here and there, from saturated solu- 
tion of lime or soda that leaves its film 
upon the surface of earth, or plant, as at 
the hot wells of the Yellowstone Park; but 
this is quite different from that solution 
of silica which at the flood seized upon 
every form and shell, whether at the bottom 
of the sea or on the shore, and that infil- 
trated the bones of the sperm whale with 
fluid crystal; very far from those electric 
currents that carried death in solution into 
every crevice of earth and ever}^ cubic foot 
of the ocean. 

It is probable that after the diluvian 
storm, when all strata had fallen into their 
present position of order, or disorder, eiec- 



The Mollusc a. 97 

trie currents shot through all metal-bearing 
rocks and supplied the metallic veins with 
gangues of quartz and turned all organic 
substance into stone. The metallic veins 
determine this fact; for they pass through 
all formations, and fasten both veins and 
rock together in their present position. 

The universal power of death implied 
a universal power of life. Without the 
flood we could have had no adequate con- 
ception of the power of Him "who spake, 
and it was done; who commanded, and it 
stood fast." That far-reaching sentence 
of death has alone given us a conception 
of the width of creation. Fossils do not 
grow — they only arrest decay, with the sto- 
ry of an existence written on them. These 
tell everywhere of a perfected creation, or 
nothing half -formed. In all the width and 
variety of their record there is no evidence 
of any transition from step to step, or ad- 
vance from form to form. 

If any creature survived this width of 



98 The Flood. 

death it must have been by miracle. Only 
by an inspired forecast could man possibly 
have prepared for a cataclysm so wide, so 
deep, so high, so long continued. The heav- 
ens and the earth were chained togeth- 
er by continuous lightnings; the tornado 
nipples moved incessantly upon the deep, 
plowed the highest plains of earth, and cut 
off the tops of the mountains. Only the 
One who made man could shield and pre- 
serve him amid this fierce strife of cosmic 
powers. 

Human life probably tells the story of all 
animal and vegetable life. The falling off 
in the years of man's life would carry with 
it all that was tributary to that life. Time 
had something to do with the enormous 
size to which some of the mammals grew; 
but the slight change which we perceive in 
the horse, in the whale, and in the deer, be- 
tween the flood and the present period, would 
indicate that between the creation and the 
flood but little change had taken place. 



The Mollnsca. 99 

There is one statement in the first chap- 
ter of Genesis of marked significance: "And 
God created great whales, and every living 
creature which moveth, which the waters 
brought forth abundantly, after their kind, 
and every winged fowl after his kind ; and 
God saw that it was good." The whales 
were created "great," as Christ created 
not bread only, but bread as from the hand 
of a baker — brown, cooked — not wheat, 
nor flour, nor leaven, nor barley, but bread 
for the table, enough to feed five thousand 
people; and "fish likewise," cooked, salt- 
ed, cleaned, broiled. So "great whales," 
which came not from jellyfish, nor pushed 
their way up through ages of time, nor 
through oceans of crustacean insects, but 
were made great, out of hand, by the Cre- 
ator, veritable monsters, mammals, adapt- 
ed to the deep seas in which they were 
to live. They were the beginning of a 
long succession of mighty monsters. If a 
creature has not changed essentially dur- 



ioo The Flood. 

ing four thousand years since the flood, it 
probably did not change in the sixteen hun- 
dred before. Of course geologists make 
small account of time, unless one speaks of 
ages ; but fossils give no play to the imagi- 
nation. Four thousand years would seem 
to be a sufficient gauge to measure by; 
surely there would be some scratches of 
the Workman's chisel in that length of 
time, if he were actually at work. But 
what if there be no traces? then the fair 
conclusion would be that nature is still at 
rest, that its wing is still folded. 

Five or ten thousand years give but little 
progress in a movement that is so slow that 
we cannot see it. If the work of creation 
still goes on, its energy has greatly abated: 
for it has received, in one instant, in every 
department, a check such as can only be 
compared to the mighty word of an instant 
creation. 



XIII. 

The Nautilus Its Own Successor. 

The preservation of many of the inhab- 
itants of the sea amid the universal death 
storm of the flood is as miraculous as the 
maintenance of many of the land animals 
by the ark of Noah. The power that cre- 
ated and afterwards fossilized them could 
also order it that a considerable proportion 
of the mollusca should reappear which had 
been the earliest occupants of the ancient 
deep. The Nautilus Pompilius not only 
exists at present in our tropical seas, but is 
one of those genera which occur in a fossil 
state in every formation. In a minute esti- 
mate of the design evidenced in the struc- 
ture and life of this little creature, Dr. Buck- 
land says (page 240): "We enter upon 
our examination of the structure and uses 
of fossil chambered shells with a prelimi- 
nary knowledge of the facts that the re- 
cent shells both of the Nautilus Pompilius 

(»») 



102 The Flood. 

and Spirula are formed by existing cephalo- 
pods." 

The various shells of the nautilus are re- 
markable for the beauty and strength of their 
construction. Its organization is of a high 
order and adapted to its home in the ocean, 
capable of sinking to the bottom or of ris- 
ing at will to the surface of the deepest 
sea. It illustrates the mechanism of myr- 
iads of similarly constructed creatures long 
since swept from the face of the earth. 
The only organ connecting the air cham- 
bers of the shell with the body of the nau- 
tilus is a siphon which passes through a 
short tube in each successive transverse 
plate till it terminates in the smallest cham- 
ber of the inner extremity of the shell. 
This mollusk was one of the carnivorous 
cephalopods — one of nature's police. It 
lived off the herbivorous mollusca, and 
roamed on the sea bottom for its food. 
" Species of this family are found fossilized 
at the elevation of sixteen thousand feet in 



The Nautilus Its Own Successor. 103 

the Himalaya Mountains identical with those 
of the Lias at Whitby," in the formations of 
Europe and America, on the coast of Chili, 
and in the green sand of England and of 
New Jersey. 

"It will appear," says Buckland (page 
2 37)5 " on examination of the shells of fos- 
sil nautili that they have retained through 
strata of all ages their aboriginal simplicity of 
structure; a structure which remains fun- 
damentally the same in the Nautilus Pom- 
piiius of our existing seas, as it was in the 
earliest fossil species that we find in the 
transition strata. Meantime the cognate 
family of ammonites, whose shells w r ere 
more elaborately constructed than those of 
the nautili, commenced their existence at 
the same period in the transition strata, and 
became extinct at the termination of the 
secondary formations." 

This evidence of one who may be con- 
sidered the greatest of geologists is suffi- 
cient for our purpose, that is, to show that 



104 The Flood. 

existing mollusks are their own successors. 
They include all that they were at the time 
their ancestors were fossilized, and have 
added nothing since to the wealth of their 
order. 

The trilobite leaves no successor. We 
have in the fossil remains of one of the ma- 
rine crustaceans evidence of a high organi- 
zation at the very earliest moment of f ossif- 
erous strata . The trilobite has not been f oun d 
in any recent strata, in nothing later than 
those of the so-called "carboniferous pe- 
riod/ 9 Their remains were distributed over 
the surface of the globe. They occur at the 
most distant points both of the northern and 
southern hemisphere. They occur in the 
Andes and at the Cape of Good Hope. 
(Buckland, page 294.) "The trilobite fur- 
nishes the most ancient example in the fos- 
sil world of the preservation of parts so del- 
icate as the visual organs of animals that 
ceased to live many thousands of years 
ago." (Buckland, page 300.) "The struc- 



The Nautilus Its Own Successor. 105 

ture," he adds, " of these eyes supplies an 
argument of high importance in connecting 
together the extreme points of the animal 
creation — the construction of an optical 
instrument precisely similar to that which 
forms the eyes of existing insects and crus- 
taceans." 

"In the trilobite each eye contains four 
hundred nearly spherical lenses fixed in sep- 
arate compartments on the surface of the cor- 
nea. The form of each eye is nearly that 
of the frustum of a cone, incomplete on 
that side only which is opposite to the corre- 
sponding side of the other eye. This eye 
tells of the light of that period and of the at- 
mosphere through which it passed, and of the 
clearness of the sea water which enabled a 
creature crawling on the bottom to see up- 
ward. . . . We do not find this instru- 
ment passing onward, as it were, through a 
series of experimental changes from more 
simple into more complex forms; it was 
created at the very first in the fullness of 



106 The Flood. 

perfect adaptation to the uses and condition 
of the class of creatures to which the kind 
of eye has ever been and is still appropriate. 
If we should discover a microscope or tele- 
scope in the hand of an Egyptian mummy, 
it would be impossible to deny that a knowl- 
edge of the principles of optics existed in 
the mind by which such an instrument had 
been contrived." Here are two marine 
creatures of wide distribution in time and 
space: both have been fossilized. One 
still lives, the other has passed away; both 
give evidence that their original structure 

remained, since they were created, un- 

» 

changed. They establish a universal law 
of creation, applicable to all genera of 
which we have knowledge. 



XIV. 
Universal Destruction of Life by the Flood. 

That one hemisphere could have been 
submerged without an equal disturbance in 
the other is not possible, if the law of fluids 
to maintain a fixed level be allowed in the 
calculation. M. D ' Orb igny thought that the 
sudden rise of the Cordilleras would be a suf- 
ficient cause for the sudden movement of 
the sea which invaded all at once the conti- 
nent. We present his argument in his own 
words: 

My final conclusion from the geological facts I ob- 
served in America is that there was a perfect coinci- 
dence between the upheaval of the Cordilleras, the 
destruction of the great race of animals, and the great 
deposit of pampas mud. These three questions of 
immense importance for American geology and for 
the chronological history of faunae may be explained 
by one cause, namely, the upheaval of the Cordilleras, 
to which we may perhaps attribute the analogous phe- 
nomena of which Europe has been the theater. (Op. 

382.) 

(107) 



io8 The Flood. 

We quote this to show the calculation of 
an able scientist as to the general effect of 
submerging a continent. If we consider 
water the fixed quantity, as indeed it is, we 
can see that the plunging both Americas 
into the all-embracing depths of the seas 
must raise a corresponding flood above the 
highest mountains of Asia. It is equally- 
certain that animal life must have disap- 
peared as suddenly and as universally there 
as in the western hemisphere; this with- 
out the equally sure testimony of the fossil- 
ized ammonite found in the Himalayas, at 
an altitude of ten thousand feet. 

If now the mammoth and the horse and 
all other animals perished as completely 
in the East as in America, how is it that 
flocks and herds and elephants and men 
are found presently abounding in all these 
plains and mountains of Asia, Europe, and 
Africa? Or, to narrow the question, how 
came it that anything survived there any 
more than here in the West ? Why does life 



Universal Destruction of Life. 109 

reign there while death reigns here during 
the space of four thousand years ? Men and 
beasts perished by the myriad in the vast 
heights and wastes of the one hemisphere, 
why not in the other? Where the ruin is 
continental, what could confine it? Where 
twenty thousand mammoths went down in 
one grave at one time, in the delta of the 
Lena, in the wide plains of Siberia, in Eu- 
rope, or in the valley of the Danube, and 
in the vast area extending from Behring 
Strait as far as the Pyrenees, what could 
survive ? 

The escaping such a catastrophe was not 
the work of an hour. Only a prescience 
more than human could have divined such 
an event in time to prepare for it, nor could 
have prepared for it even if foreseen. Su- 
perhuman wisdom and superhuman strength 
were equally necessary. The huge hulk 
that stranded on Ararat is the only rational 
solution of this problem. Higher criticism 
might find ample room here to deploy its re- 



no The Flood. 

sources. The facts are as certain as death, 
and as stern as death and time can make 
them. There is no room for imagination 
amid the fierce laws of warring floods. 
How did man outride a catastrophe that 
destroyed every mammoth distributed every- 
where over both hemispheres? 

In all the lines of sacred truth nothing is 
more exact and unromantic than the ac- 
count given in Genesis of the warning and 
preparation made by God for man's res- 
cue from this all-embracing flood of great 
waters. A hundred years were consumed 
in the immediate work of preparing a ves- 
sel that should be adequate for this great 
commission, of carrying the fortunes of the 
human family through a storm that reached 
from the foundations of the earth to the 
windows of heaven. The details of the ar- 
chitecture of this mighty craft could only 
have been carried out by workmen long 
accustomed to the ocean, and must be held 
in evidence of a wide commerce at that 



Universal Destruction of Life. 1 1 1 

early period of man's history. The propor- 
tions of the ark are those of the latest na- 
val structures of England and of Italy, but 
larger than either — say about fifteen thou- 
sand tons. It was not only architecturally 
a model, and so recognized by the English 
Admiralty, but it was prepared for electri- 
cal conditions of the sky and sea altogether 
unknown before, nor likely to occur again 
after its one voyage. It was made thor- 
oughly to resist the electrical currents that 
presently filled air and water throughout the 
earth. 

Doubtless there is a great record yet to 
be revealed of the events which attended 
the wholesale destruction of animals and 
men in that hour of judgment. Now much 
of that fearful story is as silent as the 
cemeteries of the fossilized dead. But it 
was full of intelligent warning, of spiritual 
"striving," and of the divine intervention 
of the Spirit of Christ. Yet as with Cain, 
so it was with that world of unrelieved 



1 1 2 The Flood. 

wickedness — they heard not, they heeded 
not the voice of God. 

The various items of historic interest in 
the building, loading, floating, and unload- 
ing of the ark are set down in the Bible 
much after the style of a seaman's log. 
During that long and stormy trip there 
was no room or opportunity for observation. 
Noah could have had no reckoning; there 
was no pilot but God — indeed, no helm; no 
method of relief for man or beast seemingly 
practicable. All went by miracle and an 
economy of creative power which it is hard 
to comprehend, but which sets forth God's 
unwillingness to disturb that creational Sab- 
bath which he had instituted once and for- 
ever, and in expectant possibility of this 
very flood. 



Zbe (Barren of £fcen* 



("3) 



I. 

Scientific Doubt. 

The instances of determined unbelief in 
well-established truths to which we would 
call attention are comparatively modern, 
but repeat the tenacity with which physiol- 
ogists of the last century resisted the dis- 
coveries of Jenner and of Harvey. The 
first is that of German and English schol- 
ars to the one authorship of Homer; and 
to the literal existence of the Troy of Ho- 
mer, long after Schliemann had unearthed 
the several cities which had been built upon 
the site of the Homeric Ilios, the second 
of which was "The Burnt City of Gold." 
After a ten years' war by his pen, the site 
of Hasirlik was proved by its discoverer to 
be the burial mound of the Troy of Achil- 
les and Hector; even then the destructive 
criticism of Germany was dissipated only 
by the spade and pick. 

(»5) 



n6 The Garden cf Eden. 

The next instance is that war of French 
and German chemists and biologists against 
the discoveries of Pasteur: their bitter, per- 
sistent denial of his positive, delicate, and 
thorough processes, until, by the cure of 
disease in animal, vegetable, and insect 
life, he placed the amazing facts beyond 
controversy, and proved that the invariable 
cause of death was microbe life, and that 
there was no such thing as spontaneous 
generation. Yet until this day these re- 
sults are ignored by many distinguished 
practitioners and medical schools. 

The third instance of persistent theory in 
the face of a vast sum of inductive evidence 
is that of the school of uniformitarians 
among geologists, who still maintain the 
idea of creation without any natural inter- 
vention of power beyond that now going 
on; that is, that nature works uniformly 
from its beginning — granting the postulate 
of unlimited time. 

In addition to the checks which Profess- 



Scientific Doubt. 117 

ors Prestwich and Howarth have placed 
upon this theory, there is now presented 
the discovery of the Ashley beds, with 
their rich deposits of all conceivable forms 
of life, fossilized, and in situ. " I know very 
well," says Mr. Howarth, in his "Mam- 
moth and the Flood," " that every opinion 
and every judgment, however apparently 
immovable, is really at the mercy of some 
new and obstinate fact." This "new fact" 
may be found in these beds. They put an 
end to all theories of successive strata, with 
intervals of successive ages, the cosmogony 
of modern geolgists. 

Sir H. Howarth has established by incon- 
testable facts, collected with much industry, 
"that the mammoth and its companions were 
finally extinguished by a sudden catastro- 
phe, involving a great diluvial movement 
over all the northern hemisphere, from the 
Pyrenees to the Behring Strait. The evi- 
dence is not only ample, but it is evidence 
which converges from all sides ; and there 



n8 The Garden of Eden. 

is literally nothing on the other hand, save 
a fantastic attachment to a theory of uni- 
formity which revolts against anything in 
the shape of a catastrophe. Nay, it is 
more than this, for the facts are too many 
for such a theory to be held rigidly. It is 
rather the predicating of one simple gen- 
eral catastrophe, constituted by a wide 
continental flood, instead of a complicated 
series of lesser catastrophes, involving vio- 
lent changes of level, changes of climate, 
and deluges as well." ("Mammoth and 
Flood.") In commenting on this, a writer 
in the Edinburgh Quarterly (1893, page 
355) says, very justly: "Approved principles 
in science have their drawbacks; once au- 
thoritatively laid down, they tend to stiffen 
into prescriptions; accepted by one gen- 
eration, they impose themselves upon the 
next, and finally come to be regarded as a 
sort of touchstone of truth. What appears 
inconsistent stands, if so facto , condemned; 
adverse evidence is rejected as irrele- 



Scientific Doubt. 119 

vant, or inconclusive. Difficulties are ig- 
nored, or smoothed away with easy phras- 
es, and a specious aspect of complete- 
ness and solidity is thus given to an edifice 
of knowledge often reared upon insecure 
foundations." 
8 



II. 

The Garden of Eden. 

That so many great events of sacred 
history have occurred on mountains would 
suggest that the site of the garden of Para- 
dise was on a mountain. Moses saw the 
promised land from the heights of Pisgah; 
the law was given from Horeb, "the mount 
of God"; Aaron died on Mount Hor; Mo- 
ses died in the heights of Mount Nebo 
(Deut. xxxii. 49); Christ was transfigured 
on Mount Hermon ; the temptation was on 
" an exceeding high mountain" ; the meet- 
ing of the disciples with Christ after the 
resurrection was on "a mountain in Gal- 
ilee." (Matt, xxviii. 16.) 

If Paradise was on a table-land before the 
flood, then this fact would disappear at the 
physical reconstruction of the earth's sur- 
face, by elevation or depression, directly 
after the flood. Eden was, as its name in- 
(120) 



The Garden of Eden. 121 

dicates, a " delight"; all the excellences 
of all zones and products of all climates 
were originally found in this garden of 
God. It must therefore have included 
every degree of temperature. 

From the sea to the City of Mexico there 
are successive elevations or plateaus which 
give all varieties of fruit: at Vera Cruz 
the cocoanut and vanilla bean; at Atoya, 
fifty-three miles farther, the ascent to the 
plateau of Cordova begins, a region of cof- 
fee, pineapple, and banana; eighty-three 
miles farther is the plateau of Orizaba, a 
region of oranges, tobacco, and cotton. 
From this point it is twelve miles to the 
Maltrata valley. From the Maltrata the as- 
cent in thirteen miles is two thousand six 
hundred feet, to the plain on which the 
City of Mexico stands; a table-land three 
hundred miles in length and fifty in width, 
a region of corn, wheat, oats, barley, and 
the aloes, eight thousand feet above the 
sea, where ice is often seen. 



III. 

The Site of Eden, 

It is probable that the wide plain about 
and near the cit}^ of Charleston, South Car- 
olina, was once the table-land of a mountain 
ten thousand or more feet above the sea 
level. This is evidenced in part by the fos- 
sil beds which lie thousands of feet beneath 
the marine beds of marl under Charleston, 
and partly by the volcanic action which 
still continues the source of the earthquakes 
by which the table-land was depressed to 
its present sea level. This table-land was 
traversed by streams, swift-flowing or gen- 
tle, taking their rise in the highest part of 
the mountain, like those in the great plain 
of Mexico. The flow of these mountain 
springs to the sea would provide plateaus 
for an ascent from the temperature of the 
tropics to that of frost and ice. The great 
plain of Mexico is about three hundred 
(122) 



The Site of Eden. 123 

miles long and fifty wide. A plain of table- 
land of that length and twice that width 
would give all the conditions necessary to 
meet the region of "delight" in which the 
first man and woman were created: the 
Eden of Genesis. 

A mountain site would explain the min- 
gling of the fossil bones of sea and land 
monsters with those of domestic animals as 
found in the Ashley beds. It would ex- 
plain that the waters were the last to retire 
from the point where they were at their 
highest during the flood; that is, from the 
table-land of a high mountain. Dr. Mur- 
phy, of Belfast, professor of Hebrew in 
the Assembly's College, in his learned and 
highly suggestive Commentary on Genesis, 
speaks of the statement that the waters of 
the flood had "prevailed exceedingly on 
the land, and all the hills that were under 
the whole skies were covered; fifteen cu- 
bits upward had the waters prevailed, and 
the hills were covered." He says: " 'Fif- 



124 The Garden of Eden. 

teen cubits upward.' This was half the 
depth of the ark. It may have taken this 
draught of water to float it. If so, its 
grounding on a hill under water would 
indicate the depth of water on its summit. 
. . . The sobriety and historical veracity 
of the narrative are strikingly exhibited in 
the moderate height to which the waters are 
said to have risen above the ancient hills." 
(Page 194.) 

The sum total of animal and vegetable 
life, with the exception of those in the ark, 
is here declared to have expired. " Then 
expired all flesh that creepeth upon the 
land, ... all that was in the dry land 
died. . . . And the ark rested in the 
seventh month, on the seventeenth day of 
the month, upon the hills of Ararat. . . . 
And the waters decreased continually until 
the tenth month. ... In the tenth, on 
the first of the month, the tops of the hills 
were seen." 

The interval from the entrance to the 



The Site of Eden . 125 

exit from the ark consisted of a lunar year 
of three hundred and fifty-six days and ten 
days, which makes a solar year of three 
hundred and sixty-five days. It is remark- 
able that both the lunar and the solar year 
seem at this early day to have been known. 
According to the Hebrew text, the deluge 
commenced in the sixteen hundred and 
fifty-sixth year of the race of man. (Mur- 

P h yO 

Here is recorded a long voyage, what- 
ever place was the point of departure, and 
in whatever direction the vessel went. He 
was at the helm who knew all depths, all 
currents, all winds, all the terrors of an 
ocean whipped into fury for the ends of an 
almighty judgment. 

The Charleston Earthquakes. 

For several weeks dating from August 31, 18S6, a 
large part of the United States, embracing nearly all 
the Atlantic Slope and a considerable portion of the 
Mississippi Valley, was visited by earthquake shocks. 

The starting point of these disturbances was in the 
Carolinas, and the city of Charleston and its neighbor- 



126 The Garden of Eden. 

hood were the scene of the most violent and disas- 
trous visitations. . . . The sound which accompa- 
nied the tremor was a second element in the phenom- 
enon. This came from below. It resembled the roll- 
ing of some heavy body over a floor, or the boom- 
ing of distant cannon. Like the tremor, it w r as con- 
tinuous, and became a long roar and grinding like ten 
thousand rusty chariots on a rocky road. 

The destructive effects of the earthquake were main- 
ly confined to Charleston and Summerville, South Car- 
olina. Nearly every building in the former place was 
more or less damaged ; many were demolished. Of the 
churches, scarcely any were left in a condition to be 
used. The wreck of private houses was terrible. . . . 
The terror of the unfortunate citizens cannot be con- 
ceived. Many of them passed the night of August 31, 
and several succeeding nights, in the streets and 
squares. Many persons were injured and some killed 
by falling walls. This visitation was the ninth which 
has occurred at Charleston since 1754. — Maury 1 s Phys- 
ical Geography, page 3.) 



IV. 
Age of the World — Eden, 

I take it for granted that the theory 
which places Eden at the North Pole brings 
it into America. Then I suppose the Arc- 
tic day of six months would be quite a 
windfall to those who want "more room' 1 
in the Mosaic account of "the evening and 
the morning" of the first day. 

Now, suppose we bring Eden down 
South; say as far as Charleston, embracing 
the coast between the Santee and the Sa- 
vannah, with its several rivers and inlets, 
between the thirtieth and the fortieth paral- 
lels of latitude. We have for it this much 
to say: 

i. In and near the Cooper and the Ash- 
ley rivers there is a vast collection of the 
remains of the largest mammals, specially 
of their molars and vertebrae. These are 
remarkable for their variety; very huge, 

(127) 



128 The Garden of Eden. 

very many, and evidently of many distinct 
species. We put this against all solitary 
individuals as yet discovered in or near the 
Arctic regions. 

2. Besides those remains which, from 
the amount of silica in them, have resisted 
the action of time and acids, there are 
phosphate masses in which these molars 
are imbedded. Probably the large bones 
returned to their original source. Then 
there are scattered about small and large 
bowlders of the phosphate of lime, indicat- 
ing at a greater depth a mine of this min- 
eral. 

3. This shows that these animals were 
not floated into this place by the action of 
sea currents, but were here from the first 
and found in the alluvial plains around, 
and meadows filled with bulbous plants, and 
an exuberant flora, their original habitat. 
Only a region supplying plants fed by a 
heavy phosphate pabulum could support 
creatures of such enormous bone. 



Age of the World — Eden. 129 

4. As these several species multiplied 
from a single pair, masses of their remains 
would most probably indicate the place of 
their origin. Whether behemoth was made 
in Eden, we know that he was reviewed 
there, and there named by Adam. And 
the Almighty says, speaking to Job: "Be- 
hold now behemoth, which I made with 
thee; he eateth grass like an ox." 

These views, if correct, are still further 
strengthened by the building of the ark. 
As the race had not been separated by dis- 
persion or language, it is to be supposed 
that Noah lived not very far from the orig- 
inal home of man. 

The construction of a vessel at that time 
required the same conditions of material 
and shape now essential in naval architec- 
ture. Indeed, the dimensions of the ark 
are now those of a first-class sea steamer 
for freight, and are the standard propor- 
tions in the English Admiralty office. It 
was a long, narrow vessel, evidently de- 



130 The Garden of Eden. 

signed for speed and a long voyage. Had 
it been made only to start from a given 
point and float about for a hundred and fifty 
days, and then ground at no great distance 
from the point of departure, it would have 
been shaped heavy and square. 

The timbers for such a vessel of length, 
over five hundred feet, required to be of 
continuous length and great strength. The 
cypress was entirely too brittle for the pur- 
pose. Its knees and ribs would require 
such wood as the live oak, grown near the 
sea, used to storms, and of a grain running 
every way, bearing equally well a strain 
from every direction. Large quantities 
of pitch and tar would be required for 
pitching it heavily both within and with- 
out. The word "gopher" means " pitch," 
"pine," and it is probable that the gopher 
wood was the wood of the long-leaf pine. 
I need not say that either of the Carolinas 
could have furnished the materials in abun- 
dance. 



Age of the World — Eden . 131 

That the ark was built somewhat inland 
for convenience of timber, is probable. Yet 
not very far, as the principal weight of its 
cargo was to be graminivorous stock and 
large quantities of dried herbage, both of 
which were to come from meadow lands. 

The breaking up of the deep, etc., at 
the time of the deluge would not necessa- 
rily imply any very great change in the 
conformation of the continents nor in the 
sea currents. We must also remember 
that the Lord at the creation had in view 
the possibility of the flood, as well as of the 
"fall," and arranged accordingly. When 
the ark was lifted up, and, as it is so grand- 
ly said, "went upon the face of the waters," 
it started due east if it started from near 
Charleston. It w r ould presently strike the 
Gulf Stream. Floating on that sea current, 
it would take a northerly direction until it 
reached the fortieth parallel, and then would 
go due east, and, as many a helpless craft 
since, would come within sight of Spain 



132 The Garden of Eden. 

and Africa. But those coasts being sub- 
merged, there could be nothing to deflect the 
current, but it would pass over the plateaus 
of Spain into the Mediterranean, across the 
lower part of Greece, then over the plains 
of Asia Minor, and, still holding the same 
parallel, strike Mount Ararat. The distance 
from Charleston to Mount Ararat is one 
hundred and thirty-one degrees of latitude, 
say eight thousand five hundred and fifteen 
miles. The time the ark was on the water 
was one hundred and fifty days, or three 
thousand six hundred hours. Off Cape 
Hatteras the Gulf Stream has a velocity of 
two and a half miles an hour; this would 
leave very little to be overcome, if anything, 
when we allow for the uninterrupted flow 
which the current then had. 

It is not likely that animals would be land- 
ed in any other than the latitude to which 
they were accustomed. They would deter- 
mine the direction of the ark. The path- 
way of the ark, under this supposition, had 



Age of the World — Eden . 133 

a blessing in it. Between the thirtieth and 
the fortieth parallels have sprung the great 
philosophers, warriors, statesmen, and dis- 
coverers of the race. 



V. 
Eden and Charleston. 

That so wealthy a deposit of fossils 
should be found on the banks of the Ash- 
ley cannot be accounted for by the action of 
sea currents. The only other force is that 
of glacial agency, a theory that supposes 
the preparation of the earth for the hab- 
itation of man by ice processes, which 
enveloped all animal life in death long be- 
fore man's appearance. The advocates of 
it, however, say that "the glacial agency is 
not recognized in the United States south 
of the Ohio River, and proofs of its action 
are entirely wanting in California." 

i. Doubtless these fossils are of animals 
indigenous to the region where they were 
found. The statement of Professor Holmes, 
of Charleston, to the Academy of Natural 
Sciences of Philadelphia, is that there is 
on the banks of the Ashley River a remark- 

(134) 



Eden and Charleston. 135 

able conglomerate of fossil remains, in de- 
posits of the Post-tertiary age : " Remains of 
the hog, the horse, and other animals of re- 
cent date, together with human bones, min- 
gled with the bones of the mastodon and 
extinct gigantic lizards." 

They were all overwhelmed together by 
a common disaster. It is no great stretch 
to suppose that among the beautiful groves 
of Eden-land there were grottoes and ca- 
thedrals built by God, such as the Luray 
Cave in Virginia, with its clustered, fluted 
columns, its high Gothic arches, and even 
its organ pipes. The white phosphate of 
lime would have presented the material for 
such retreats of sufficient strength. In the 
hour of their alarm, men and beasts would 
have sought such shelter. Its vaulted cham- 
bers would have held their floating bodies 
free from the action of the flood until its 
subsidence. When at the end of the year 
the earth w r as broken in strata, and all na- 
ture disposed by God so as to throw over 
9 



136 The Garden of Eden. 

man a deeper shadow and a shorter life, 
then the electric pulsations which visited 
Eden might break into pieces these re- 
mains of Paradise and mingle the bones of 
domestic animals and man with the masto- 
don and the saurian. 

It is noticeable that Tournal and Chris- 
tol, Schmerling, Austin, M. Lartet, M. 
Boucher, Dr. Rigollet, all speak of remains 
— found usually in the south of France — of 
the mammoth, the elephant, the extinct ox, 
in company with bones and implements of 
men, all in caves. 

There are two facts of much import in 
the fossil deposits of the Ashley. They 
contain fossilized human bones, with the 
bones of the mastodon. The bones of M. 
giganteus, the mastodon, have been seldom 
found in a mineral state, though bones and 
teeth have been found silicified. This mas- 
todon, in the opinion of Dr. Adam Clarke, 
is the behemoth of Job. It has generally 
been obtained from the alluvial formations 



Eden and Charleston. 137 

at a depth of from five to ten feet. We 
are not surprised at the discovery of a hu- 
man bone, here and there, enveloped in 
stalagmites, with the remains of mammoth, 
rhinoceros, and other animals, which, un- 
der the drip of lime, might require no great 
length of time, but we seldom, if ever, hear 
of a fossilized human bone. Indeed, for a 
long time it was averred that there were 
none ; and considerable stress was put upon 
the fact to prove that man lived long after 
these great mammals — maybe "thousands 
of years after" ! Nov/ we find that on the 
banks of the Ashley they lived together, 
and w r e can understand the true force of 
what the Almighty says to Job: "Behold 
behemoth, which I made with thee" 

2. Man might have been made as well 
on one side of the Atlantic as on the oth- 
er, for he could cross over; and before the 
flood probably did. But how about behe- 
moth? Elephants might have been carried, 
for they were serviceable to man and could 



138 The Garden of Eden. 

be gentled. The general character of be- 
hemoth makes it very questionable if he 
could have been gotten on board any craft. 
He is represented as "the chief of the 
ways of God" — the head of land animals, 
as leviathan was of the sea. And these 
two, behemoth and the whale, are the best 
known of all mammals. Whoever visited 
the Exposition in New Orleans will remem- 
ber the consideration given to both of them. 
The mastodon, as reproduced by Mr. Ward, 
was standing in the gallery of the Govern- 
ment Building, midway, just in front of the 
principal aisle. He stood there as the lord 
of creation, his great tusks and head pro- 
jecting well over the rail; altogether about 
the size of several elephants. If this was a 
faithful rendering of his parts, we can add 
to them the fierce consciousness of his 
strength: the largest, wildest, most invul- 
nerable and dangerous of all that inhabit- 
ed the hills or the plains. "He that made 
him can make his sword to approach unto 



Eden and Charleston. 139 

him." He could surpass the enormous speed 
of the elephant, having a greater stride. 
Strong as the inclination to migrate may 
have been in him, he could not have passed 
the barrier of the ocean between Europe 
and America. If he crossed over, he must 
have crossed by way of the Aleutian Archi- 
pelago, between America and Asia. Only 
11 He that made him" could bring him be- 
fore Adam in Eden. 

John Foster, of England, says "that the 
sight of the first two wild or fierce creatures 
that came up of their own motion into the 
ark must have produced an effect upon 
the scoffers of that day only less powerful 
than the tread of an earthquake." We can 
well imagine that two enormous mammals 
would lead off in this sublime procession 
of animated nature at the bidding of the 
Creator. It was doubtless well to get them 
securely stowed away in their cribs at the 
very earliest moment, as on the other side, 
at the unloading, they should be the very 



140 The Garden of Eden. 

last to test the consistence of the new-made 
ground. 

3. "Gold' has been found somewhere 
near the sources of the Santee and of the 
Savannah; possibly also the "onyx." The 
Pison, the Gihon, the Hiddekel, and the 
Euphrates doubtless gave their names after- 
wards to many " flowery," "falling," and 
"arrow- swift" streams in the land where 
the ark rested, and humanity began again 
its great flow: just as movers to the far West 
from the Carolinas are very apt to trans- 
port the names of the streams and towns 
left behind them to the frontier regions 
where they conclude to dwell. 



VI. 
The Fossil Record of Eden. 

However much imagination may float in 
airy vision over the site of Eden, there is 
none in the bones which lie just beneath its 
surface. To these matter-of-fact bones we 
now turn ; for there is far more in them than 
the phosphoric acid of which they are large- 
ly composed. They, in fact, unlock the 
mystery of the ages, and drive back to its 
hidden source the destructive speculation of 
human philosophy. 

Among the vast variety of them we first 
notice the fossilized bones and teeth of man. 
Their first discovery in these beds absolute- 
ly alarmed the discoverer. He records un- 
consciously the immediate effect upon his 
mind. He doubtless saw at a flash that one 
human bone in situ, in place, mingled with 
the bones of the mastodon and the saurian, 
was more than the lever of Archimedes, 



142 The Garden of Eden. 

overturning, as it did, vast theories of for- 
mation, whether Paleozoic, Mesozoic, or 
Cenozoic, and ended in an hour those care- 
fully constructed solitary " reigns " of "fish- 
es/ 7 of "saurians," of "'reptiles/' of "mam- 
mals/ ' stretching through unnumbered ages 
to prepare the way for man. And in the 
same hour dissipated those "cataclysms of 
ice' and of "ice-born torrents/' those 
"cave-bear epochs" and "reindeer epochs," 
those "ages of stone'' and of "unground 
stone," as also the "bronze age," and the 
"iron age"; all of which, as it was sup- 
posed, served the long purpose of introduc- 
ing a " prehistoric man " ! 

Recovering from the first shock of his 
discovery, Professor Holmes, with a care- 
fulness which marks the true lover of 
science, presently returned with a friend, 
a geological expert, and the two together 
fixed its scientific value. This was in the 
year 1844. In 1867 Professor Kerr and 
Dr. Pratt discovered other human bones, a 



The Fossil Record of Eden. 143 

jawbone with teeth, a thigh bone and a shin 
bone, in the same bed — "all of which we 
now have in our cabinet.' ' 

He was led to this discovery by the 
finding of arrowheads and spearheads in 
"out-of-the-way" places, which differed 
greatly in their general characteristics from 
those found scattered all over this conti- 
nent. "After a careful study," he adds, 
"of everything connected with their discov- 
ery, the place and stratum in which they 
were found, and their remarkable forms, 
we were satisfied that they belonged to, and 
were deposited in, the same geological age 
to which the bones and teeth of the masto- 
don, elephant, rhinoceros, horse, and other 
land animals belong." 

To do full justice to this important dis- 
covery we quote at length its history: "Not 
very long after finding the above-named 
relics of human workmanship, and while 
engaged in our usual visits to the Ashley 
bed, a bone was found projecting from the 



144 The Garden of Eden. 

bluff, immediately in contact with the sur- 
face of the stony stratum (the phosphate 
rocks). We pulled it out, and behold a 
human bone ! Without hesitation it was 
condemned as an ' accidental occupant' of 
quarters to which it had no right, geological- 
ly, and so we threw it into the river. Alas ! 
we have lived to regret our temerity and 
rashness. A year after a lower jawbone 
and teeth were taken from the same bed. 
Subsequent events and discoveries show 
conclusively that the first discovered human 
bone was 'in place,' and the beds of the 
Postpliocene, not only on the Ashley, but 
in France, Switzerland, and other Euro- 
pean countries, contained human bones as- 
sociated with the remains of extinct animals 
and relics of human workmanship, proving 
most conclusively that the Carolina speci- 
mens were found in -place. These Europe- 
an discoveries were made ten years later." 
The fact is now fully admitted. The 
duke of Argyll says: " Latterly geology 



The Fossil Record of Eden. 145 

and archaeology have met on common 
ground — ground in which man and masto- 
don have been found together. " ( ' ' Prime- 
val Man," page 24.) That this is a recent 
item in geological calculation may be seen 
in the statement of Buckland in 1837: "No 
conclusion is more fully established than 
the important fact of the total absence of 
any vestiges of the human species through- 
out the entire series of geological forma- 
tions. Had the case been otherwise, there 
would indeed have been great difficulty in 
reconciling the early and extended periods 
which have been assigned to extinct races 
of animals with our received chronology. " 
(Vol. I., page 86.) 

Dr. R. P. Smith, in his "Scripture and 
Geology," says: "Upon the whole, no ev- 
idence has yet been afforded by geology 
that man existed on the earth earlier than 
during the alluvial period." 

Hitchcock says (edition 1852, page 100): 
"Some writers contend that when Asiatic 



146 The Garden of Eden. 

countries have been examined the remains 
of man may be found in all the fossilifer- 
ous rocks, and that they do not thus occur 
in Europe and America because he had not 
spread into these parts of the world until a 
longtime after his creation/' But on this 
he observes : * ' Comparative anatomy shows 
conclusively that most of such animals as 
now inhabit the globe could not have lived 
when the same physical conditions existed 
that were necessary for the creatures found 
in the lowest rocks." 

The same writer is arguing in respect to 
the twenty-four hours of the Mosaic day. 
He says: "By this theory existing species 
of animals and plants ought to be found 
mixed with the extinct species in all the 
fossiliferous rocks; for Moses describes 
only one creation of the different races. 
Now the fact that they are not thus mixed 
shows that they could not have been con- 
temporaneous." (? a g e 285.) 

It was on this supposed absence of the 



The Fossil Record of Eden. 147 

bones of man that speculative cosmogo- 
nists ran wild in their estimates of creation- 
al periods and processes. The elimination 
of man from the record of the rocks was 
the virtual elimination of the Mosaic record 
from the work of creation. And philoso- 
phy was now at liberty to enter upon its 
own methods consistent with nature, as na- 
ture now is. A universe could now begin 
with the law of growth as far back as might 
be necessary — the farther the better; not 
with the narrow resource of a few thousand 
years, but with the full sweep of countless 
eons. 

And it is curious to see the license of 
speculative creation — its diminutive begin- 
nings, its " Amoeba ftrtncefis" — "a lump of 
jelly from the gutter, without stomach, or 
liver, or heart, or breath, or head, or feet" 
— rather a hopeless start. Next in the pro- 
cession of life comes the "epic of the 
trilobite." Then an interval of time in 
the history of the world, "when the scales 



148 The Garden of Eden. 

of empire hung balanced between ' fishes' 
and ' reptiles.' Fortunately ' nature favored 
the latter.' " In those ages, too, came the 
batrachian, frog-like creatures, some of 
them as large as an ox, leaping along the 
red sandstone of Connecticut, and leaving 
tracks that for a long time passed for bird 
tracks. Then came the " reign of reptiles " 
proper, unnumbered ages in duration; of 
ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs, huge crea- 
tures having the body of a lizard, the coni- 
cal teeth of the crocodile, and the biconcave 
vertebra of the fish, with which many oth- 
er sea monsters divided empire, especially 
enormous seals, turtles, sharks, and croco- 
dilians. 

After this long drama of reptilian life, we 
are next introduced to the " reign of mam- 
mals — the megatherium, dinotherium, mas- 
todon, and such like quadrupeds, moving 
supreme over the broad range of ages. 
Elephants and rhinoceri on the land, sea 
lions and hippopotami in the water." To 



The Fossil Record of Eden. 149 

each of these "reigns" is assigned any pe- 
riod from ten thousand to one hundred thou- 
sand years — time being no object. 

Then follows the "glacial epoch," then 
the "submergence," and "elevations" of 
continents. Before this is completed na- 
ture makes several pauses, "oscillations," 
in which the sea stands "perhaps for ages 
over districts that had been marked out as 
the dwelling place of man." The most 
pronounced of professional philosophers 
(Winchell) puts it thus: "Empires rose 
upon the earth and crumbled in succes- 
sion to decay a thousand ages before the 
foot of Adam had pressed the soil of the 
Garden of Eden. A series of dynasties 
flitted like shadows over the face of our 
planet and disappeared beneath the dim 
horizon of the past while the empire of 
man was but an idea dwelling in the Al- 
mighty mind." 

All this is, in the interest of creation, 
made easy— to prepare the way for man; 



150 The Garden of Eden. 

in fact, to prepare man. He is the ideal 
toward which all nature moves, and all na- 
ture expects — by the way of the gorilla, and 
by the thumb of some preadamite African 
that has a tail, if possible, shorter than a 
rabbit's ! But it takes time to do it. Lyell 
says eight hundred thousand years, Haeckel 
twenty thousand, and Mortillet two hundred 
and thirty thousand. "Cuvier," however, 
says Bishop Gleig, "has clearly proved 
that the human race cannot be much more 
ancient than is stated in the writings of the 
Hebrew lawgiver." 

Is it not pitiful indeed to see humanity so 
degraded in its ancestry, embracing all the 
brute and reptile horde in the source of its 
life, and to be assured that this is the tes- 
timony of nature through all the strata of 
her history? And is it not painful to see 
intelligent Bible readers staggered at this 
enormous reductio ad absttrdum of philoso- 
phy, to read their apologies for the Mosaic 
record, that self-luminous revelation of the 



Th e Fossil Record of Eden . 151 

Infinite One "who spake and it was done, 
who commanded and it stood fast ' 9 ? Sure- 
ly the image of Him whose manhood is 
now a factor eternal in the divine subsist- 
ence, who was at the first made after the 
sublime pattern of his own mind, who is 
the center of the universe, "the first and 
the last," may not be degraded by his 
creatures, even in their philosophic specu- 
lations, with impunity. Will he not rather 
suffer them to walk in the light of the 
sparks which they have kindled until these 
go out, and the light that is in them be- 
comes a great darkness? But as soon as 
man's position as chief contemporary among 
all fossils of all periods, of all species, of 
all strata, and of all successions is recog- 
nized, then do these creational epochs, 
agencies, and evolutions "melt into air, 
thin air," and the fabric of their vision, as 
an insubstantial pageant, is dissolved. 

It would seem as if God had summoned 
all his creatures by the one fiat from the 

10 J 



152 The Garden of Eden. 

deep and from the waste to this basin of the 
. Ashley, that he might bury them, and that 
he might write in their fossilized remains the 
epitaph of a world created and of a world 
destroyed "by the breath of his mouth." 

Next in import to the bones of man are 
those of the horse, man's comrade on the 
field of battle, in the field of sport, and at 
his daily toil; specially as they are here 
found mingled together with the bones of 
extinct quadrupeds. This is clearly stated 
in Wells's Geology, page 293 : "At the 
time of the discovery of the American con- 
tinent, the horse was unknown to the na- 
tives — the horses now found wild in North 
and South America being undoubtedly de- 
scendants of subsequent European impor- 
tations. Yet the bones of the horse are 
found fossil in the very latest Tertiary 
deposits of the United States, and seem 
to warrant the inference that the species 
having been called into existence upon 
this continent died out, and was then re- 



The Fossil Record of Eden. 153 
newed from the old world by the agency of 



man," 



The saw-like teeth of the great shark oc- 
cur in these beds in vast numbers. Had 
the beds been "elevated" after the fossili- 
zation of the bones of marine animals, they 
would have been covered with a stratum of 
globo cermet, an unctuous mold, separating 
them from the bones of gigantic land quad- 
rupeds. But they are all alike mingled and 
covered with alluvial sand to the depth of 
two feet from the surface, doubtless washed 
upon them from neighboring sources. There 
is nothing among fossils older than sharks' 
teeth, nothing more uniform; and they are 
the same shaped teeth that are found at 
present in this fierce creature. Its age 
and size may be determined by its teeth. 
Every two inches represent thirty-seven 
feet in length. "Out of forty thousand 
taken from the Ashley basin and exam- 
ined by us," says Professor Holmes, "the 
largest specimen was six and a half inches 



154 The Garden of Eden. 

long, four and a half wide, and weighed 
two pounds." So that the enormous size 
of these carnivora belong to the earliest 
ages of life when organic forces were 
richer and higher than at any subsequent 
period. They existed to check excessive 
increase of lesser tribes. These deposits 
carry us back to the creation. They have 
lifted the extinct gigantic vertebrated mon- 
sters out of their supposed antiquity and 
made them coeval with man. Their being 
found so near the latest surface breaks up 
all supposed connection between the posi- 
tion and the age of strata, showing that the 
order of place is not an order of time — that 
the deepest places of the earth are of the 
same age with the highest, which is con- 
firmed by the fact that the metallic veins 
with their gangues run through all strata 
equally. 

The theory which begins the universe of 
life from a single invisible point finds no 
support here. Of all figments it is the 



The Fossil Record of Eden . 155 

weakest. On the contrary, organisms were 
never more numerous or elaborate in their 
structure, never huger, more active or mul- 
tiform, than at the first hour of creation. 
And never was there a moment of earth's 
history in which the form of man did not 
appear preeminent, perfect, and divine in 
its power and character of expression, mor- 
al, spiritual, or physical. 

We find a strong confirmation of these 
truths in the views of the two foremost of 
living physiologists. Dr. James Martineau, 
in his "Modern Materialism," page 179, 
says: "To suppose that by pulverizing the 
world into its least particles, and contem- 
plating its components where they are next 
to nothing, we shall hit upon something 
ultimate beyond which there is no prob- 
lem, is the strangest of illusions. There is 
no magic in the superlatively little to draw 
from the universe its last secret. The inor- 
ganic and unconscious portion of the world, 
instead of being the potentiality of the or- 



156 The Garden of Eden. 

ganic and the conscious, is rather its resid- 
ual precipitate. In advancing this specula- 
tion, I only follow in the track of a veteran 
physiologist and philosopher whose com- 
mand of all the materials for judging is be- 
yond question — the author of ' Psychophys- 
ic' Fechner insists that protoplasm and 
zoophyte structure, instead of being the 
inchoate matter of organization, is the cast- 
off residuum of all previous differentiation, 
stopping short of the separation of animal 
from plant, and of sex from sex, and no 
more capable of further development than 
is inorganic matter, without powers beyond 
its own of producing organization. And, 
far from admitting that the primordial pe- 
riod had few organisms, which time in- 
creased in numbers, he contends that the 
earth was formerly more rich in organisms 
than now, and that the inorganic realm has 
grown at the expense o£ the organic." 

If there were any " prehistoric ,JI instant 
in the world, it is not indicated in these 



The Fossil Recoi'd of Eden . 157 

Carolina beds. For where man is, there is 
history, specially man fresh from the hands 
of his Maker. If the records of Moses are 
not sacred, they at least are human. They 
go back to the "beginning." Speech im- 
plies a perfected beginning, and writing im- 
plies speech. "The first beginnings of 
human speech," says Argyll, "must have 
had their origin in powers of the highest 
order. Man's first speech was of God, and 
with God. That of itself implies a wealth 
of endowment the most comprehensive. It 
establishes the highest rank of spiritual and 
intellectual being as man's possession — that 
he w T as made in God's own image." 

As the spade and pick of Schliemann pierced 
through stratum after stratum of earth that 
covered ancient Troy, and dissipated the 
destructive theories of German scholarship 
by striking the very gates of the city, and 
thereby confirmed the truth of Homer, so 
does the uncovering of these long-buried re- 
mains of the flood, on the banks of the Ash- 
ley, confirm the truth of the Mosaic record. 



VII. 
Eden's Final Drama. 

We have at last secured a firm footing 
on the banks of the Ashley — the first that 
has been found for centuries — upon the fos- 
silized relics of the original home of man. 
Here we can make a stand for the Mosaic 
record against the speculations of those 
cosmogonists who toss the history of crea- 
tion about as a kitten plays with a ball. 
These relics tell a wonderful story. As far 
back as 1850, Professor Agassiz pronounced 
the remains of marine vertebrata in the 
Charleston basin to be "the greatest cem- 
etery he ever saw." And Professor T110- 
mey's report said: "The most remarkable 
feature of the fauna of the period of the 
deposition of these beds was the vast num- 
ber of cartilaginous fishes. It would seem 
as if about the close of the Eocene period 
these voracious monsters, conscious of their 

(158) 



Eden" s Final Drama. 159 

approaching end, had congregated here to 
die." At that time but few specimens of 
the remains of quadrupeds had been found 
upon the Ashley. Collectors had been 
searching in the marl beds, not in the over- 
lying beds. Since then a vast deposit has 
been uncovered of fossilized bones and teeth 
of mastodon, megatherium, dinotherium, 
elephant, deer, horse, cow, hog, muskrat, 
intermingled with the remains of marine 
animals and the phosphate nodules. 

These phosphate rocks and fossils lie 
intermingled but two or three feet below 
the surface and nearly parallel with it, ex- 
tending over many miles, yielding an aver- 
age of over six hundred tons to the acre. 
They contain sixty per cent, of " bone phos- 
phate." The working of these beds has 
come to be an industry of amazing propor- 
tions. As much as 432,757 tons have been 
taken out and shipped this present year, and 
duringthe past eight years the enormous sum 
of two million three hundred and forty-six 



160 The Garden of Eden. 

thousand one hundred and forty-three tons. 
The whole tonnage of lake, river, and 
ocean steamers in the United States is 
1,221,206 tons. So that the product of these 
Carolina beds would have loaded them 
twice over with full freights. Large ships 
and steamers and fleets of dredges and 
flats are employed in the working and 
exportation of this fossil and phosphate 
wealth. Millions of dollars have already 
been realized from this burial place of 
the antediluvian world. The beds are ex- 
haustless, far more so than the Siberian de- 
posits of gigantic elephants, great as they 
have proved to be. 

We naturally inquire, Where did this 
mass of bones come from? They once 
lived. How did these herbivorous and 
carnivorous herds meet together — these 
marine and land creatures? What sound 
called them? They must have lived to- 
gether, to have been buried together. How 
is it that the more domestic animals, which 



Eden *s Final Drama. 161 

are always found on the outskirts of men, 
if not with them, are also mixed with these 
saurians as well as with the huge mamma- 
lia ? How came it that they all sleep high 
and dry, near the very latest formation, and 
within three feet of the earth's surface? 
Nor could they possibly have been floated 
here. They are in situ^ "in place" ; where 
they fell, there they lie. Had such a float 
started from the shores of Europe, it must 
have speedily been strewn over the waves and 
found its rest in ten thousand distinct bur- 
ial places at the bottom of the ocean. On 
the other hand, how could the huge, swoll- 
en carcasses of quadrupeds have been de- 
tained in one spot until their remains could 
form an evenly-disposed stratum and be cov- 
ered over by red and yellow soil? 

The Noachian flood doubtless did its 
share of the work, and that quickly, with 
these and all air-breathing creatures that 
inhabit the land. Yet in these mighty rec- 
ords, which no mind, how T ever speculative, 



162 The Garden of Eden* 

can afford to pass by, there is disclosed a 
history which must have preceded that uni- 
versal disaster. 

As these creatures of field and flood 
were widely scattered over the waters and 
the estuaries of the continent, not only for 
subsistence, but by the laws of their dis- 
tinct natures, the imagination of man can- 
not supply a satisfactory theory for their 
simultaneous herding just before the in- 
stant of their destruction. Within a limited 
area, those who heard the first mutterings 
of the universal storm, and were near by on 
the hills, would seek shelter in grots and 
caverns, in company with man himself. 
But the action was too rapid, too wide, 
and, in the nature of such overflow and 
pluvial torrents, after the first half hour 
there was no opportunity afforded man or 
beast for flight. So, whatever means was 
employed for massing these herds, it must 
have preceded the flood by many weeks or 
months. 



Eden' s Final Drama. 163 

The buffalo slowly started its long lines 
of movement, and came in thousands to the 
appointed place of rendezvous. The huge 
bulls and cows of the elephant took up their 
stately march as to a funeral; the elk of 
vast strength and width of antler ; the light- 
footed deer; the lion, with lordly gait erect, 
one of God's police; the cautious, soft- 
stepping tiger, his rage for blood hidden 
beneath the beauty of his skin ; and all the 
lesser tribes of creatures — the boar with 
foam upon his tusk ; the furtive wolf, 
now walking meekly in line with flocks 
of fleecy sheep; the bearded goat, with 
port of dynasties unborn; last of all, the 
horse, with quivering life restrained — all 
these and many more, as if by precon- 
certed signal, converged to the one center. 
Why not? They were about to leave their 
bones, at the bidding of their Maker, upon 
the plains of earth, or else to contribute the 
noblest of their kind to a world that should 
come after. 



164 The Gai' den of Eden. 

Doubtless instinct had brought the older 
individuals of them more than once back 
to the first center of animal life, to enjoy 
its salt licks and its luxuriant herbage, 
well charged with grateful phosphates, until 
the motion of herds had marked traces and 
lines of travel reaching far away from the 
precincts of Eden to distant pasture grounds. 

Along with these there could have been 
seen flocks of birds stretching their flight 
from every quarter of the heavens. The 
wavy columns of the snow-white swan, 
crimson-plumed flamingoes, screaming ea- 
gles with light-devouring eye; the strong- 
winged goose, in his flight filling the sky 
with clarion call; the brilliant, noisy par- 
rot; the richly-colored bird of paradise; 
the tiny humming bird, as flecks of sun- 
shine waltzing with the flowers; the pea- 
cock, trailing his gorgeous wealth; and pi- 
geons swift of wing, ever at the service of 
man, and among them the very one that by 
and by brought out of the ocean's waste an 



Eden s Final Di'ama. 165 

olive leaf! These lighted, or rose or cir- 
cled over these beautiful plains of tropical 
verdure, dotted with islands of richly-laden 
fruit trees and forest growth that still re- 
mained to man. 

We can scarcely surpass the truth in 
trying to paint the life and color of this 
part of the home of the race, originally 
planted by God with every tree that is 
pleasant to the sight and good for food, as 
it gleamed under the golden haze of its 
setting glory. Nor of the event about to 
happen would it be possible to surpass 
the reality in attempting to realize the mi- 
nute ordering and preparation which the 
Divine Prescience outlined in his direction 
to Noah. And when the final hour came 
everything was ready and went forward as 
if by the exact weight and measure of a 
creative purpose. 

The extended plain of table-land and 
surrounding hills of Eden formed a basin 
destined presently to become the scene of 



J 66 The Garden of Eden. 

the great catastrophe and the evidence of 
the truth of sacred history. Through the 
center of this fertile plain there ran a clear, 
wide stream. The entrance to it was bound- 
ed by cliffs whose walls rose sheer, and 
whose heights were crowned with beetling 
crags of opal, amethyst, emerald, sapphire, 
and chrysoprasus — the angel-guarded ram- 
parts of Paradise, where, it was thought, 
might be seen at sunrise and at sunset the 
sword of the cherubim shooting its lines of 
fire far out on every side. And when the 
night set in, the fire of God, in jagged maze, 
flashed continuous behind the clouds that 
circled its top. And at the deep hour of 
midnight some thought they heard the 
wheels of a thousand chariots, spirit driven, 
raging round its heights ; but others heard 
a thousand golden lutes with organ pipes, 
and, at intervals, voices crying, "Holy! 
holy! holy!" 

Doubtless numerous parties of armed 
herdmen, mechanics, and thousands of 



Eden s Final Drama. 167 

others, came from the neighboring port to 
see this marvelous gathering of beasts and 
birds, who saw the inspired procession of 
life, wild and tame, as it moved in majestic 
tread and order, self-segregated and self- 
divided into bands of sixteens and fours; 
the great males in front and the females 
following, and lowing for their young now 
left behind forever. 

The primeval year commenced about the 
nearest new moon to the autumnal equinox. 
The rains began the 17th of the second 
month, say about the 8th of November. 
On the 1st day of November, by the com- 
mand of God, Noah began to take in the 
live part of his cargo. The stream of mov- 
ing beasts and flocks continued for one 
week. The birds circled in from above, 
all excepting the firm-stepping ostrich, who 
went in by the gangway, until the three 
decks of the mighty craft were securely 
stowed and the hatches fastened down. It 

was on Friday that the labor of the week 
11 J 



1 68 The Garden of Eden. 

ended — yes, of a hundred years. Noah had 
placed his wife and sons and sons' wives on 
board. As a preacher of righteousness, he 
had warned the vast crowds that from time 
to time gathered to see the world -famed 
structure, and, as they thought, the im- 
measurable folly of an old man's life. The 
Spirit of Christ was with him, until one win- 
dow after another of the proffered mercy 
closed upon them, and judgment alone re- 
mained, 

Meanwhile, though stunned by the silent 
column of creatures which mysteriously 
confirmed the warning, yet, as the sun 
never shone fairer nor was the earth ever 
more solid under the tread of daily life, they 
rallied each other with timbrel and dance 
near the ark until the very day that Noah 
entered it, and up to the very hour when 
its door was secured by the Divine Hand. 

Then, in a few moments after, the wind 
moaned, the sky darkened, and nature 
gave signs of universal distress. The tor- 



Eden' s Final Drama. 169 

nado was already on the wing; all around 
its dark nipples lowered. The crash came; 
floods fell in huge waterspouts; the sea 
came in; the waters rose thirty feet in an 
hour, and so continued every hour for forty 
days and forty nights. The work of death 
was swift. All that breathed the air died, 
old and young, man and beast, from the 
mastodon to the mole. For the most part 
they were choked where they stood, not 
knowing whither to escape from the all- 
surrounding waves. 

Presently marine monsters, the huge car- 
nivorous saurian and the yet more terrible 
shark, were borne in. The color and scent 
of blood brought them in shoals. They 
found the feast prepared for them, upon 
which they gorged and fattened month by 
month. In two hours the plains of Eden 
became a lake covered with the bodies of 
quadrupeds, birds, and men. The cutting 
dorsal fin of gigantic sharks flashed every- 
where, leaving behind them a crimson wake. 



170 The Garden of Eden. 

Huge land carnivora and sea monsters closed 
in the unequal death grapple. Every hour 
brought in fresh schools of saurians, squalo- 
dons, sea lions, and huge crocodiles. Here 
they stayed and fattened upon flesh, and 
the Eden of man became the habitat of gi- 
gantic creatures of the sea. 

When by and by the ark grounded upon 
Ararat, then the waters of the flood retired 
more swiftly than they rose. The vast con- 
gregation of sea monsters, detained too long 
upon the feeding grounds, were stranded by 
the rapid exit of the water. They, too, must 
needs encounter the death struggle at the 
end of the catastrophe, as the creatures of 
the land had at its beginning. All their 
bones were mingled together and formed 
the greatest of cemeteries on the banks of 
the Ashley. 

It was probably at this period of re- 
construction and subsidence that the high 
table-land of Eden, the parterre of heaven, 
with the groves of glory, where Adam and 



Eden ' s Final Drama. 171 

Eve ate and drank before God, now disap- 
peared, with the other features of that part 
of Eden, Havilah, Ethiopia, the "Cedarn" 
Assyria, circled and watered with rivers; 
those streams whose strands were gold and 
pearls and gems, all, all disappeared, leav- 
ing us only their memories and their names. 
It could no longer now be said "the nearer 
the ark the nearer to Paradise," for the ark 
rested on a far-distant shore, where, in the 
Orient, the world began anew, with new 
divisions of the human race and of human 
language, and with new centers of animal 
life. 



VIII. 
The Genesis of Eden. 

In approaching an unknown region we 
are greatly tempted to enter it by the 
charmed woodlands of fancy. Metaphys- 
ical speculation has had full play in its ef- 
fort to realize the origin of all things. The 
ancients and moderns have met in the solu- 
tion of this problem. The fortuitous con- 
course of atoms was a favorite theory with 
Roman philosophers, which draws from 
Cicero his admirable answer: " Si mun- 
dum efficere potest concursus atomorum, 
cur porticum, cur templum, cur domum, 
cur urbem non potest? quae sunt minus 
operosa et multo quidem faciliora." (" De 
Natura Deorum," lib. 2, 37.) 

To make a beginning of the universe has 

been the perplexing problem. What seemed 

easier, if the germ were almost invisible? 

But, in the language of Mr. Burt Pope: 

(172) 



The Genesis of Eden. 173 

" The Scripture precludes any other doc- 
trine than that of an absolute creation of 
all things by the direct act of the Divine 
will. It omits any allusion to preexisting 
forms of matter, animate or inanimate, out 
of which the present universe was through 
long periods developed. Physico- theolog- 
ical speculation may interpose universe af- 
ter universe, to carry up the continuity of 
cause and effect nearer to the final source; 
but at length it must come to the unsearch- 
able chasm between phenomenal things and 
the eternal essence.'' (Page 366.) 

" Thou hast made heaven, the heaven of 
heavens with all their host, the earth and 
all things therein, the seas and all there 
is therein, and thou preservest them all." 
(Nehemiah.) 

The thought of a completed beginning 
did not enter the minds of the Grecian phi- 
losophers. Therefore there was nothing 
finished in creation — in fact, no creation, 
only a womb-product that had elements of 



174 The Garden of Eden. 

further development; only an analogy sug- 
gested by processes of growth., no new 
idea even, that is, a something made out 
of a nothing. 

The difficulty of conceiving substance as 
starting up and out of an absolute void in- 
heres in our native feebleness of thought. 
We cannot even fancy such a thing: much 
less can we conceive of a world solid, full 
of forms, of vegetable and animal life, of 
metallic and earthly structure, springing 
into existence, whirling on the soft cush- 
ions of an invisible attraction, and moving 
off on a pathway accurately defined, at an 
enormous speed, all suspended over ''the 
empty place." What human mind can re- 
alize this even after the fact? Surely none 
could before. And yet there is no fact 
more certainly ascertained. By weight, 
measure, and number, it is proved., forever 
proved. That such full-orbed substance, 
endowed with such harmonv of movement, 
should come into actual expression, and 



The Genesis of Eden. 175 

continue without change, or hesitation, or 
decadence of regular flight, for centuries, 
adding days to days, months to months, 
years to years, unwearied itself while giv- 
ing to all else the abiding rule of time — it- 
self the permanent standard by which the 
subtile movement of the ages may be meas- 
ured — surely all this is as incomprehensible 
as it is vast, and vast as it is real. 

That it could have had no beginning, is 
the other impossibility of intellectual con- 
ception. If life had a beginning, mere 
substance must have had. Of the former 
truth we are conscious; so that we feel 
that the latter must also be true. Over- 
whelmed by the fact of one world, what of 
a system of worlds, equally as large as this, 
as round, as swift, as luminous? "Where 
can a creature hide?" The tremendous 
sum of realities which press us on every 
side, and as if they were made to press 
upon us the stupendous truth of that uni- 
verse which is not of us, but outside of us, 



176 The Garden of Eden, 

which weighs us down into our own super- 
lative nothingness — surely it is well calcu- 
lated to make us ready to receive from 
some higher source, maybe from Him who 
created us, the explanation of how and 
when all came to be that is. 

This it is which the book of Genesis fur- 
nishes: written by Moses under the direc- 
tion of the Holy Ghost. And we may now 
approach the sacred precincts of the first 
Eden through the sublime arches of the 
divine treasure-house of verbal inspiration. 
There is in the first chapter of the Bible the 
whole formulated glory of creation. The 
internal grandeur of these records carries 
with them the evidence of their origin; of 
that "wisdom" which was "the beginning 
of his way, before his works of old; which 
was by his side, as the Architect of the 
world, rejoicing before him day by day; 
when he set up the heavens, and decreed 
a compass upon the face of the roaring 
abyss." But in its first verse, as in a proem, 



The Genesis of Eden. 177 

there is contained the fullness of God's es- 
sential nature, and the sum of all the ter- 
restrial, celestial, and heavenly phenomena 
of his mighty hand. 

The last analysis of power is speech, as 
also its first expression. The Word, the 
still small voice; not the invisible wind or 
the visible fire, or the felt throb of the 
earthquake; in these God w T as not, but 
in the Word he was; not in phenomenal 
power, but in essential. The Word — "He 
spake, and it was done!' Nothing else? 
Yes, lightnings: " Canst thou send light- 
nings that they may go and say unto thee, 
Here we are?' If they go and come by 
his Word, then surely the Word is the last 
analysis of power. 

The speech of God is next to God — 
without the "Word, not anything was made 
that was made. So near is it, so much is 
it of himself, and like himself, that it is it- 
self personal, an Eternal Personality, the 
Son of God. It is not merely an expres- 



178 The Garden of £ den. 

sion of power, but an existence of power, 
consenting, acting in perfect accord with, 
and producing the exact image of, the Di- 
vine purpose. 

St. John opens up to us the deep secret 
of the creative process: the combined will 
of the Father and the Son as realized in 
the energy of the Word. That "Word," 
by whom St. Paul says "all things were 
made, whether visible or invisible, whether 
they be thrones, or principalities, or pow- 
ers, or dominions ; all things were made by 
him and for him." 

All which lay imbedded in the first verse 
of the first chapter of Genesis, out of sight 
to Moses himself. In the plural form of 
the Hebrew there was in the very name 
of God a statement of the nature of the di- 
vine subsistence ; nor was it revealed to any 
prophet, priest, or king, however holy and 
well informed, from Job until John; until 
Christ himself, at the last hour, and after 
his resurrection, revealed it to his disci- 



The Genesis of Eden . 1 79 

pies: the Father, the Son, and the Holy 
Ghost, as the sublime persons of the God- 
head; in whose eternal name he ordained 
that all nations should henceforth be taught 
and baptized. 

So, too, in the second verse there was hid- 
den a mystery fully as great: the personal- 
ity of the Holy Spirit, who moved over the 
face of the deep, and threw upon it the 
shadow of his own glory; in advance of 
the creation of light; embracing all its 
floods and preempting them by the pres- 
ence of his holiness, eternal, vital, infinite, 
as his own hallowed possession. 

There could not be stronger evidence of 
the fullness, accuracy, and faithfulness of 
these records than that they held truths to 
be revealed in the roll of the ages, the ex- 
istence of which was unknown to Moses by 
whose pen they were written ; the light of 
whose inspiration was withheld in its height 
and depth of meaning, but reserved for 
those that should come after. This volume 



i8o The Garden of Eden. 

of hidden truth, be it also remembered, 
was upon a subject greater than that of cre- 
ation — upon the nature of the divine sub- 
sistence, and which held in its evolving the 
dispensation of the Son and the adminis- 
tration of the Spirit. 

We may therefore receive implicitly the 
very words of Moses in this divine record. 
At every step it transcends every possible 
preconception of the human mind. The 
order of the creative work is confirmed by 
all subsequent discovery, not excepting the 
sandstone tracks in Connecticut. Yet be- 
fore the sun, the evening and the morning 
are said to be " day the first." Certainly 
that could only have been written by an 
inspired pencil. The first four days were 
God's days. They carried with them their 
own measurement. Still these days had 
their duration in the Divine mind. They 
lacked not in precision, though the sun and 
the moon were not as yet charged with 
notching the thin space. He who moves 



The Genesis of Eden. 181 

by law reveals to us that these four primal 
days were "days," as fully as those which 
afterwards were marked by solar evenings 
and mornings ; they were days, mighty days ; 
accurate as the flow of time, though as yet 
they belonged to the eternal spaces of the 
Godhead. Stupendous in labor, infinite in 
results, each had its programme painted on 
the Divine mind. Each was uttered in 
prelude by hosts of angels, with choral re- 
sponse, and each was completed and framed 
into the fixed law of its continuance. "He 
spake, and it was done; he commanded, 
and it stood fast." 

Without a definite beginning there could 
have been no definite completion of the 
work. Not only once, but again and again, 
the element* of time is introduced by God 
in his creative fiats; it is the limit without 
which we could not conceive of the work 
itself; hence the struggle against the pre- 
cision of the Mosaic cosmogony. This 
checks all speculation as to an infinite be- 



- 



182 The Garden of Eden. 

ginning and an infinite development, which 
practically ends in the eternity of matter. 
Take away the act of creation, positive, 
definite, complete, and you take away a 
personal God, and that leaves God out al- 
together. " Nature" alone remains, which 
is agnosticism, which is atheism. 

God created, and created in time, not 
before it. As the laws of his moral uni- 
verse were thundered from Sinai in "ten 
words," so the laws of his natural universe 
were given forth in the ten fiats, (S Let there 
be." "His works were finished from the 
foundation of the world." The full round 
beginning assures the full perfect comple- 
tion of the great work. If there is any- 
thing finished, done, completed, it is cer- 
tainly this world of birds and buds, of dew 
and diamonds, of winds and clouds, of day 
and night, of spring and autumn. No co- 
coon, or siliceous sponge, or spray, or leaf 
is imperfect; nothing is fragmentary. As 
far as the microscope can pursue crea- 



The Genesis of JE den. 183 

tion, all is rounded and finished; the far- 
ther, the more perfect-*— wonders increasing 
at every step. And as far as the telescope 
can follow his hand in the garniture of the 
heavens, to Arcturus or Orion, to Sirius or 
the Pleiades, or where "his Spirit formed 
the crooked serpent," where the arches 
of space are literally peppered with suns, 
even there the work of the Holy One is 
perfect in every line of movement, every 
gramme of weight, and in every beam of 
the spectrum. We are now in the midst of 
God's creational Sabbath, as declared by 
every voice of nature. "It stood fast." 
The seas could not overleap their bounds, 
nor could the mighty creatures in them 
leave their habitations. Myriads of beau- 
tiful forms floated on the air, as on an 
upper sea. The light flashed on wing and 
scale, and all the waves laughed in the sun- 
shine. The clouds moved about, carrying 
the glory of God as if direct from his 

throne, filling every landscape and flood 
12 



184 The Garden of Eden. 

with a sense of his presence. The thun- 
derings of a thousand flukes, sporting on 
the deep, mingled with the ocean's ceaseless 
octave as it raged on stormy coasts. Vast 
forests lifted their heads to the sun, dark- 
ened with vines, or bent under richly laden 
boughs, the beautiful home of feathered 
tribes. Extended plains, on which browsed 
herds and flocks ; where the tall grass waved 
in billowy gold beneath the autumnal wind. 
Brooklets, gathering drops from mossy 
heights, leaping, hiding, darting on toward 
the stream, now restless, now gentle and 
clear, which moved by easy curves, as a 
thread of silver, through rich meadow lands, 
flashing its way toward the sea. Here and 
there hoary mountain tops aided the sun, 
with dome and needle, to lighten up the 
distant valley. Cataracts, awful as Nyassa 
or Niagara, break their beryl columns in 
muffled cadence, filling the air and earth 
with ceaseless pulses of terror. Above all, 
the cerulean arch of ever-enduring mercy, 



The Genesis of Eden. 185 

with its all-satisfying depth by day and its 
myriad glowing sentinels by night, kept its un- 
wearied watch against the hosts of darkness. 
There was a time — an hour — w T hen the 
world was not; yes, we may say, an in- 
stant. Then came the instant when it was. 
What then? It moved not. There it is! 
On what does it rest? what holds it up? 
Emptiness of space — nothing. Now it 
moves! It required a power to move it 
great as that to create it. It moves sixty- 
five thousand miles an hour on its orbit. 
But after the first hour it requires the same 
force to hold it up and on — in fact, every 
moment the same; so that creational en- 
ergy is being repeated continually. Why, 
then, should we hesitate to believe that 
the world was made by a word? Some of 
the fathers thought that an apology was in 
place, that it should have taken so long as 
six days to make a world, when the vast 
creation of all-embracing, all -continuing 
light was made at a word. 



1 86 The Garden of Eden. 

"God's first creature was light," says 
Lord Bacon. That all-pervasive ether that 
givqs form to everything, that enriches with 
its color, that warms with its heat, that binds 
with chemical ray every atom to some kindred 
atom, that bears upon every beam the story 
of its origin ; subtile, swift, fresh, exhaustless, 
a fluid expanse without bottom or shore, in 
which worlds and systems of worlds swim 
and float as minnows and air bubbles in the 
sea. Such a creature is only less than the 
Divine Word from which it sprang. 

There would seem to be no hesitancy 
in receiving the truth that God said, "Let 
there be light, and there was light.' 9 How 
else could anything so swift have come 
into being? Was there any recess or depth 
where it could be slowly perfected ; whence 
in the full strength of its all-penetrating 
radiance it could issue forth? Only in the 
Infinite Wisdom could the complex laws 
of light have been conceived, and only by 
the Infinite Word could it have been kin- 



The Genesis of Eden. 187 

died into its fullness of expression. The 
world, vast as it is as a scene of creational 
power, is small when compared with the or- 
bit on which it moves. It is but eight thou- 
sand miles through, but its orbit is one hun- 
dred and eighty-three millions of miles in 
diameter. The two forces which hold it in 
its movement upon the empty nothing are 
the sun's attraction, proportioned in inten- 
sity to the square of its distance, and the 
force with which it was started at the rate 
of sixty-five thousand miles an hour. Here 
are laws which repeat themselves in this 
immense orbit every instant, compared with 
which in size the earth is but a mustard 
seed. And this vast orbit when compared 
with the extent of light is itself still less. 
Such reaches of the divine harmony pre- 
sent the work of creation to the faith rather 
than to the intellect of man, to that " evi- 
dence of things not seen, by which we un- 
derstand that the worlds were framed by 
the word of God." 



1 88 The Garden of Eden. 

St. John introduces us to the prime 
agent in this great work in the cosmogony 
with which he opens his Gospel: u Him 
who made the light that was made; who 
was himself the uncreated Light; the glory- 
as of the only begotten of the Father, full 
of grace and truth ; whose ray has lightened 
every man that cometh into the world ; who 
was made flesh and dwelt among us; who 
was in the world, and the world was made 
by him, and the world knew him not." 
These bursts of amazing light thrown by 
the Spirit upon "the beginning," and 
upon the creation of all things, reveal to 
us the Creator himself in the Son of man, 
Jesus of Nazareth. Therefore to him we 
come logically for instruction in the deep 
things of God; of which he took part in 
the beginning, when " things which are 
seen were not made of things which do 
appear." 

It aids greatly the feebleness of our 
powers, as we attempt to stand with the 



The Genesis of Eden. 189 

Stars and Sons of God in the creative 
morn, if we may see him, the Maker 
of the universe, in the desert, over against 
Capernaum, with five thousand seated be- 
fore him in ranks, both men and wom- 
en, about to witness his creative power. 
The bread with which he fed them implied 
naturally the field, the seasons, the cultiva- 
tion, the threshing, bolting, grinding, mix- 
ing, leavening, and the cooking, say of six- 
ty barrels of flour. The fish that he made 
implied by natural process the seining, salt- 
ing, cooking of a ton and a half of that 
kind of "meat." Yet they who saw the 
hand that fed them, heard the blessing, and 
ate the bread, believed not on him. It re- 
quired supernatural aid to perceive, or even 
receive, the act of creation, so far does it 
lie outside of the range of human thought. 

The voice that swathed the primal floods 
repeats itself on the deck of the craft that 
bore him asleep on a pillow, when, at a 
call, he arose and stilled the tempest. The 



190 The Garden of Eden. 

loud-echoing voice that brought forth "Laz- 
arus" from the vaults of the dead is the 
highest expression of the power of life, in 
its swiftness and action, that the human 
mind can take in. 

In creation, the law of continuance was 
the first thing ; else simply individuals would 
have existed. But to create a genus, a 
tribe, a kind, it was needful that the seed 
should be in the citron and the citron be 
ripe; that the tree should be grown and 
planted. The time must be that of fruit, 
the golden hour of autumn. Every tree 
was richly fruited with luscious gold ; every 
vine hung its ripe clusters on bough and 
branch, or overlaid the cool grots where 
fountains bubbled and streamlets murmured 
as they glided slowly along over beds of 
pebbly opal. So every bird was feathered 
high, created in the full wealth of its life, 
male and female. The song was in its 
mouth, and presently the egg was in its 
nest. The first morning breathed as fra- 



The Genesis of Eden. 191 

grant an atmosphere and exhaled as pure 
incense to the Creator as any that ever 
came after. The odor was on the full-blown 
rose; the yellow pollen, as grains of gold, 
was on the lily's leaf, as perfect in its beauty 
as when long after, in the eyes of Christ, 
it was richer than King Solomon's white 
vest broidered with golden bees. Nothing 
imperfect, nothing incomplete, came from 
the hand of God. The tiniest creatures 
were, if possible, more perfect than the 
largest. Whatever was out of sight, and 
remained to be hidden for thousands of 
years to the limited vision of man, was yet 
finished to the last point, awaiting the dis- 
covery of sight-invigorating lenses, that new 
worlds of harmony might burst upon the mind 
of man, out to the farthest edge of animalcule 
minuteness. So that grains of sand held cav- 
erns, and in them ravenous beasts laid them 
down until hunger drove them forth to seek 
their prey — all fed by God. 

And as beneath, so above; in the reaches 



192 The Garden of Eden. 

of space, an overarching depth of penetra- 
ble impenetrable distance ; where the Spir- 
it garnished the heavens, and his hand 
"formed the crooked serpent"; there, out 
there, are orbs of flame and solid fire fear- 
ful to contemplate, impossible to conceive, 
millions of times larger, mightier than this 
world, and great in number as in speed 
or size. There new centers are estab- 
lished, with swift-rushing planets attend- 
ing. There is the same finished work; all 
are balanced as the accurate weights of the 
chemist or the numbers of the mathemati- 
cian, so that nothing can be added, noth- 
ing excerpted, without danger to the celes- 
tial mechanism. The balancings of spheres, 
the axes and curves of orbits, were con- 
ceived in the sublime harmony of the Di- 
vine mind, and brought into their places 
and shapes at his omnific word, to await 
the opening thought of a Copernicus, a 
Kepler, a Newton, or the space-penetrating 
lens of the great Italian. 



The Genesis of Eden. 193 

The creation of man was reserved to the 
latest hour, about whom and for whom all 
was to revolve, in the heights above or in 
the floods beneath, who was to be the true 
expression of the Divine purpose amid all 
these forms of his own will. Another will, 
the image of his own person, the pulse of 
his own love responsive, Adam, "which 
was the son of God," was now to be. 
When we consider that this was a first step 
in the direction of the Incarnate One; to 
be the ancestor of him whose manhood 
was to be, and is now, an eternal factor in 
the expression of the Godhead; the maj- 
esty of him who sits throned amid angels 
and spirits, created, redeemed; well may 
we pause to catch the wisdom, the delica- 
cy of structure, the wealth divine of this 
handiwork of God. The brain, the eye, 
the hand, the voice, the soul, the conscious- 
ness, the affections, the passions, the form, 
the countenance, the powers immortal, spir- 
itual, for high converse with the Father and 



194 The Garden of Eden. 

the Son, and for the life of undimmed glory 
to be inherited by and by from the ages be- 
fore, and to reach forward through the life- 
time of God; which all entered into this 
crowning work of the Divine Spirit, and 
consummated it — "male and female cre- 
ated he them." 

They were beauteous in holiness. As, 
long after, the babe Moses was "beautiful 
to God," they were beautiful to the Spirit, 
beautiful to each other, beautiful to the an- 
gels, beautiful to the children, who have 
ever since dwelt upon this holy pair as the 
beginning of all that was noble and elevated 
in man — our first parents. 

Whatever may have been the awful proc- 
esses of their creation, there was in them 
implanted an uncreated essence which came 
direct from the Spirit. He breathed into 
them "the breath of lives, and man became 
a living soul." As the risen Saviour again 
breathed upon man and said, "Receive ye, 
the Holy Ghost," so now his life became 



The Genesis of Eden. 195 

their life, his pulses of honor and love were 
theirs, and they were his. 

It was now, when they were endowed, 
and the garden was prepared for them, that 
the Divine hand and mind rested. He saw 
that it was "good," all was good, but this 
was "very good." Creational energy en- 
tered upon that long Sabbath which has 
ever since overarched our being with its 
sublime repose. He rested, and we enter 
into his rest. Though disturbed in its spir- 
it, it will be maintained forever. There is 
a rest reserved for the people of God — a 
virgin rest, as yet untried, unopened; the 
restoration of that eventide hour of the first 
Eden, when Adam and Eve ate in the pres- 
ence of God and feasted upon the tree of 
life. Into this we shall by and by enter, as 
children let loose in a garden, and so be 
forever with our God. 



DC 
Evolution Broken at the Neck. 

Mr. Darwin invented the theory of a 
continuous force which, beginning at a pro- 
toplasm, develops into every form of life, of 
consciousness, or of conscience. This in- 
volves all organic and all inorganic sub- 
stance. The simplicity of this theory was 
thought to solve all problems of existence. 
It was eagerly accepted, illustrated, and set 
forth as the end of all controversy in re- 
spect of the creational mind and methods. 
It satisfied all who were willing to reduce 
everything to natural law with its cast-iron 
necessity. It relieved humanity thereby 
from all responsibility. It presented to the 
insatiable conscience a theory of human life 
and condition which must still its clamors 
and endless protests once and forever. 

This mighty chain of created fate con- 
sisted of many adamantine links, which de- 

(i 9 6) 



Evolution Broken at the Neck. 197 

fied all interruption. As usual, the whole 
world seemed for a time captivated and 
carried away with this marvelous solution 
of moral law and of all spiritual life ; it set 
free the slave of mortal fear; it released 
man from the hot shackles of Sinai ; it en- 
throned nature in all her moods of terror 
and beauty as the one mistress of the world ; 
it drove back the tyranny of inspiration into 
the dim regions of star-dust, and offered an 
undisturbed sleep to all the sons and daugh- 
ters of humanity in nature's ceaselessly re- 
curring seasons of death and life} it trans- 
formed all immortality into a dream of the 
past. 

Mr. Darwin was himself transformed by 
his own philosophy from a Christian to a 
materialist. His letter to a student at Jena, 
published in the Pall Mall Gazette, dated 
Down, June 5, 1879, shows the change: 

Sir: I'm very busy, and am an old man in delicate 
health, and have not time to answer your questions 
fully, even assuming that they are capable of being 



198 The Garden of Eden. 

answered at all. Science and Christ have nothing to 
do with each other except in so far as the habit of sci- 
entific investigation makes a man cautious about ac- 
cepting any proof. As far as I am concerned, I do 
not believe that any revelation has ever been made. 
With regard to a future life, every one must draw his 
own conclusions from vague and contradictory proba- 
bilities. 

Wishing you well, I remain your obedient servant, 

Charles Darwin. 

My mind [he says elsewhere] seems to have be- 
come a kind of machine for grinding general laws out 
of a large collection of facts ; but why this should have 
caused the atrophy of that part of the brain on which 
the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive. (" Life," 
page 160.) 

Mr. Huxley rejects Christianity simply 
upon the ground of " defective evidence, 
not upon that of the mystery of its truth" ; 
but accepts evolution, the evidences of a 
system which, as yet, has never shown, ei- 
ther in life or in fossil, one single link of 
the supposed transition of species. 

The transition must have occurred, if ev- 
olution be true; and especially a transition 



Evolution Broken at the Neck. 199 

from the inorganic to the organic, which 
may properly be taken as the neck of the 
system. But Mr. Huxley and Mr. Tyndall, 
and all others of the scientific world who 
have watched the thorough and profound 
results of Pasteur's biological and chemical 
experiments, now fully indorsed, accept- 
ed, and confirmed by the French Academy 
of Science, must know the incontrovertible 
truth that there is no such thing as sponta- 
neous generation. This puts an end to all 
evolution, which is continuous or nothing. 
It is broken at the one point which divides 
between the inorganic and the organic. 
Evolution may still have its up-country par- 
tisans, who have not heard the hews, and 
keep up the fight after the war is ended; 
but it is dead, hopelessly dead, by a blow 
from the great French biologist. 

The supporters of spontaneous generation have, as 

Janet observes, been driven to take refuge in the 

sphere of the invisible. Up to the present time, at any 

rate, the delicate and exquisite experiments of Mr, 
13 



200 The Garden of Eden, 

Pasteur may be regarded as decisive. (Farrar's "Wit- 
ness of History.") 

Aristotle said in regard to spontaneous 
generation: "All dry bodies which be- 
come damp, and all damp bodies which 
are dried, engender life." At the time 
of Louis XIV. we were hardly more ad- 
vanced. Van Helmont, a celebrated alche- 
mist doctor, wrote: "The smells which 
arise from the bottom of morasses pro- 
duce frogs, slugs, leeches, grasses, and other 
things." His recipe for creating a pot of 
mice was: "To press a dirty shirt into the 
orifice of a vessel containing a little corn. 
After about twenty-one days, the ferment 
proceeding from the dirty shirt, modified 
by the odor of the corn, effects the tran- 
sition of the wheat into mice." Van Hel- 
mont asserted that he had witnessed the 
fact. Upon the discovery of the micro- 
scope, partisans of spontaneous generation 
said: " Is it possible to believe that micro- 
scopic organisms are not the outcome of 



Evolution Broken at the Neck. 201 

spontaneous generation?' 1 (Life of Pas- 
teur, page 89.) 

In his lecture at the Sorbonne, Pasteur 
exclaims: 

There is not one circumstance known at the pres- 
ent day which justifies the assertion that microscopic 
organisms come into the world without germs, or with- 
out parents like themselves. Spontaneous generation 
is a chimera. 

To this Mr. Florens, permanent secre- 
tary of the Academy of Science, adds his 
testimony: 

The experiments are decisive. Pasteur puts to- 
gether air and putrescible liquids, and nothing is pro- 
duced. Spontaneous generation, then, has no exist- 
ence. (Life of Pasteur, page 109.) 

These facts are confirmed by William 
Burt Pope, of England. (See " Compen- 
dium of Christian Theology," I. 404.) 

The continuity of this development suffers a fatal 
breach at the outset: it has no link between the inor- 
ganic and the organic world. . . . Meanwhile the 
doctrine of Biogenesis, that all life comes from life, 
holds the field against all experiment, or rather in the 
strength of all experiment. Spontaneous generation 



202 The Garden of Eden. 

has never jet been attested. But that is not the only 
gap. The genesis of a new species of any kind, 
whether of plant or animal, has never been observed 
by man. And most fatal gap of all, the leap from the 
highest approximate to the appearance of man him- 
self is one over a great gulf as fixed as that between 
paradise and the lower hades. 

To suppose that by pulverizing the world into its 
least particles, and contemplating its components when 
they are next to nothing, we shall hit upon some- 
thing ultimate beyond which there is no problem, is 
the strangest of illusions. There is no magic in the 
superlatively little to draw from the universe its last 
secret. (J. Martineau, " Modern Materialism," page 
118.) 

Fechner insists that the protoplasm and zoophite 
structure, instead of being the inchoate matter of or- 
ganization, is the cast-off residuum of all previous dif- 
ferentiation, stopping short of the separation of plant 
from animal, and of sex from sex, and no more capa- 
ble of further development than is inorganic matter, 
without powers beyond its own of producing organiza- 
tion. And far from admitting that the primordial pe- 
riods had few organisms, which time increased in num- 
ber, he contends that the earth was formerly more rich 
in organisms than now, and that the inorganic realm 
has grown at the expense of the organic. {Ibid. % page 

i 7 8.) 



Evolution Broken at the Neck. 203 

The truth is, that Mr. Pasteur has opened 
to science a universe as vast as the stellar 
spaces of Newton's discovery. Out of the 
infinitely small, at the millionth end of the 
microscope, he has revealed an empire 
dreadful to contemplate, the true realm of 
the sources of all disease. This amazing 
discovery has determined beyond contro- 
versy the nature of life, and its impassable 
boundaries. After many years of demon- 
stration and conflict, he has left no room 
for doubt. Whether it will or not, the sci- 
entific world must dismiss its theories and 
change its formulas to suit the incontro- 
vertible facts brought to light by this great 
biologist. 



X. 
The Five Books of Moses. 

The Bishop of Ely, in the Speaker's 
Commentary, says: 

The book of Genesis is not an ill-digested collec- 
tion of fragmentary documents, but a carefully ar- 
ranged narrative, with entire unity of purpose and 
plan. The use of the names of God is neither arbi- 
trary nor accidental, but consistent throughout with 
the Mosaic authorship and the general scope of the 
history. After Moses's miraculous experience of the 
burning bush, and God's revelation of his name Jeho- 
vah as a name not known before, we might naturally 
expect that he would show a partiality for its use ; a 
revelation by which the Most High had declared him- 
self the special Protector of his people. From chap- 
ter ii. 4 Genesis to the end of chapter third, the two 
names Jehovah and Elohim are used together in or- 
der to forcibly impress upon Israel that the One who 
had created all things was the " Jehovah" who had 
revealed himself as their Protector. 

Moses could have written the First Book of Mo- 
ses, for he had every conceivable qualification for 
writing it; but the writer of after times who could 
have produced that book must have been himself a 
(204) 



The Five Books of Moses. 205 

wonder, unsurpassed 'by any of those wonders which 
he is supposed to have devised and recorded. Cer- 
tainly as yet nothing has been proved in modern dis- 
covery which can disprove the records of Genesis. 

If Moses did not write Genesis, he wrote nothing; 
hence to shake the foundation of Genesis is to de- 
stroy the fabric of the Pentateuch. 

Upon this contention nothing can be 
more satisfactory than the learned and elab- 
orate work of Professor Green, of Prince- 
ton, New Jersey, in his " Unity of the 
Book of Genesis." His reasoning and ref- 
utation of the hypothesis of higher criticism 
are complete. He shows that it has no sup- 
port in the Pentateuch, absolutely none. 

All tradition [he says], from whatever source derived, 
whether inspired or uninspired, unanimously affirms 
that the first five books of the Bible were written by 
one man, and that man was Moses. There is no 
counter testimony in any quarter. From the predom- 
inant character of their contents, these are commonly 
called " The Law." All the statutes contained in them 
are expressly declared to have been written by Moses. 

The higher criticism has been of late so associated 
with extravagant theorizing, and with insidious attacks 



206 The Garden of Eden. 

upon the genuineness and credibility of the books of 
the Bible, that the very term has become an offense to 
serious minds. It has come to be considered one of 
the most dangerous forms of infidelity, and its very 
nature hostile to revealed truth ; . . . and it has 
proved a potent weapon in the interest of unbelief. 
The faith of all past ages in respect to the Pentateuch 
has not been mistaken. It is what it claims to be, and 
what it has always been believed to be. 

The Bishop of Ely, in his admirable in- 
troduction to the Speaker's Commentary, 
powerfully supports these views of Profess- 
or Green. He says: 

The romance of modern criticism is as remarkable 
as its perverse ingenuity ; for when once a theory has 
been suggested, its author and his followers proceed 
forthwith to construct an elaborate history upon it 
much as if, instead of excogitating a theory, they had 
discovered a library of authentic records. The wider 
a theory is from all that has hitherto been believed, 
from concurrent testimony and careful inquiry, the 
more it finds acceptance and is hailed as a discovery. 
If we look a little into the foundations of the theory, 
it will be found as baseless as other dreams. 

The facts which have been disclosed by 
the learned scientists of South Carolina and 



The Five Books of Moses. 207 

Alabama, Professors Tuomey and Holmes, 
do by pick and spade contribute satisfacto- 
rily to the truth of the Mosaic record, and 
to the belief of all ages in its inspiration. 

The question is not merely, Who are in- 
spired? but, What is inspired? Dr. Mur- 
phy, professor of Hebrew in the University 
of Belfast, Ireland, in his profound commen- 
tary on Genesis and Exodus, says: "We 
must take our views of inspiration, not from 
a priori considerations, but entirely from 
the evidence furnished by the Scriptures 
themselves." It is clear that, in discussing 
the question of verbal as distinguished from 
plenary inspiration, our recourse is only the 
plain statement of the Bible: Exodus xxv. 21, 
22; Numbers xii. 5-9, and vii. 89. "Thou 
shalt put the mercy seat above upon the ark; 
and in the ark thou shalt put the testimony 
that I shall give thee. And there I will 
meet with thee, and I will commune with 
thee from above the mercy seat, from be- 
tween the two cherubim which are upon 



2o8 The Garden of Eden. 

the ark of the testimony, of all things which 
I will give thee in commandment unto the 
children of Israel." (Exodus xxv. 21, 22.) 
"And when Moses was gone into the taber- 
nacle of the congregation to speak with 
God, then he heard the voice of one speak- 
ing unto him from off the mercy seat that was 
upon the ark of testimony, from between the 
two cherubim; and he spake unto him." 
( Numbers vii. 89. ) The effect was as though 
Moses was audibly addressed by another. 
How this effect was produced we are not told. 
This certainly was verbal; it consisted of 
words,) attested by a voice of some -person 
near, but invisible. This was the charac- 
ter of God's communion with Moses, when 
he spoke "face to face" with his servant. It 
was in this accurate method that God gave 
his law on Sinai; by exact writing of words 
upon a table of stone; written by his finger, 
as with the point of a diamond. It was the 
only way in which a law of life and death 
could be given. 



The Five Books of Moses. 209 

The same is true of the laws of mercy, 
which demanded positive accuracy, express- 
ive of deliverance from the law of sin and 
death. All that set forth the sacrificial and 
priestly mediation essential to a system of 
pardon demanded a like precision ; and this 
is all found in the ample and specific cere- 
monial laws of Leviticus. 

Dr. Murphy puts the vital question: 

Whence comes the conception of pardon that so 
readily suggests itself in this awful predicament (of 
the sinner)? Simply, we submit, from the voice of 
revelation ; a revelation as early as the fall, entwining 
itself with the memories of the race, descending as a 
tradition from father to son, and cherished as a foun- 
tain of hope in the valley of the shadow of death. But, 
apart from all revelation, reason could only assure us 
of the sentence of death upon the sinner; and we 
know not whether imagination could even suggest the 
possibility of pardon. Reason, at the most, can only 
tell us of justice and doom; revelation, when its voice 
is heard at all, speaks of mercy and peace. 

" The inspiration of the Scriptures must 
be, by the very nature of the thing, verbal, 



2io The Garden of Eden. 

simply because the Scriptures to which this 
property is ascribed consists of words." 

The time at which the book of Genesis 
was written has an important bearing upon 
the constitution of the book itself; whether 
the first chapter was written with the rest of 
the book. It is evident that of these chap- 
ters the second is a continuation of the 
first; that it is a special description of that 
which for clearness of narrative had been 
stated generally : The minute method of 
making man, (i) out of the dust; (2) the 
breathing into him the breath of life ; ( 3 ) 
man is placed in a garden. (4) His mor- 
al creation: God commands him — he may 
eat of every tree excepting one ; and that 
life and death hung upon his obedience or 
disobedience. (5) God creates Eve out of 
man, and places her with him as a need- 
ed part of his life, a helpmeet. All this is 
evidently a natural and necessary explica- 
tion of what is stated at large in the first 
chapter. 



The Five Books of Moses. 211 

That the names of God — Jehovah Elohim, 
the Lord God — should be united in the sec- 
ond chapter and repeated twent}^ times in the 
second and third chapters, but that Jehovah 
all through subsequent chapters should be 
used conversely with the name Elohim, 
shows both unity and continuance of the 
record, easily apprehended. It all indicates 
that the same method of inspiration was 
used, and at the same time, to impart to 
Moses the information of God's creative and 
providential presence in all the preceding 
past. No part of this wonderful record de- 
manded more precision than the first two 
verses of the first chapter, as they contained 
virtually all that follows, throughout not 
only Genesis and Exodus, but the entire 
canon, from Genesis to the Apocalypse. 
The commanding majesty and authority 
which distinguishes the Bible from all other 
books could not have been secured by mere 
tradition from the fathers, nor could the 
persons of the Trinity have been couched 



212 The Garden of Eden. 

in anything less than in words direct from 
the lips of God. 

The time at which Moses wrote the book 
of Genesis could not have preceded the 
revelation made to him at the burning 
bush — " I am that I am." Between 
the burning bush, the crossing the Red 
Sea, the giving the law on Sinai, there 
was scarcely sufficient historic pause to 
record anything. All these great events 
were referred to the setting up of the tab- 
ernacle in the wilderness, and the construc- 
tion of the ark of the covenant, with its 
cherubim and its golden mercy seat. When 
these were completed, God spoke, from 
this lid of the ark, the whole sum of things 
in the past, "the beginning" of all things; 
of the laws of sacrifice and priesthood, so 
constantly then used; and of things arising 
from day to day in that vast host of Israel, 
requiring both the power and the wisdom 
of God for its support and guidance. The 
chapters in Exodus and Numbers already 



The Five Books of Moses, 213 

quoted introduce us to the verbal inspira- 
tion by which Moses received these rec- 
ords and laws from the mouth of God; in 
which recording, Moses speaks of himself 
in the third person, saying, " as God com- 
manded Moses." Caesar's commentaries 
are all written as if speaking in the third 
person. Those minute Levitical directions 
demanded the most exact statement of the 
service of the altar, and of purification upon 
the part of the worshipers. Even now 
much study is necessary to estimate what 
was required of the thousands who ap- 
proached the Holy One, and of those who 
mediated between him and the people of 
Israel. 

The marvel of all is that whether it be 
the creation of worlds or the laws of sac- 
rificial approach that are described in these 
books of Moses, all is couched in words 
most transparent, and with a pervading 
everyday common sense that constitutes 
these first books of the Bible as readable 



214 The Garden of Eden. 

and intelligible as the book written by men 
now living. At a morning family prayers 
the children and servants can be as fully 
interested in the making of a world, or in 
the sacrifice of Isaac, or in the story of Jo- 
seph and his brethren, or in the plagues of 
Egypt and the overthrow of Pharaoh, as 
they possibly could be by anything found in 
the "Talisman" of Walter Scott, in Mrs. 
Sherwood's "Lady of the Manor," or in 
Audubon's "Birds of America." 

No books have such a perennial vitality 
as those spoken by God, and written by his 
prophets, judges, and evangelists. It is the 
all-sufficient evidence that the Infinite Mind 
is their author, and they were written for 
all the ages. Any book or scrap of ancient 
writing of the same date with these books 
of Moses is scarcely intelligible to the most 
learned. It is this tremendous common 
sense of the Scriptures that brings us "face 
to face " with God. It characterizes the par- 
ables, the Epistles, the Acts. The dealing of 



The Five Boohs of Moses. 215 

God with St. Paul, St. Peter, St. Stephen, 
Philip, Barnabas, with David and Samuel 
and Joshua, with the patriarchs, was so per- 
sonal that the distance of God in nature 
was scarcely felt by them. They talked 
with him as with a visible friend, though 
they feared him as the Mighty One. 

Our knowledge of the wonders of na- 
ture, so high, so profound, so inscrutable, as 
those of the spectroscope, of the telephone, 
of the phonograph, of the telegraph, of elec- 
trical motion, and of electrical light without 
oxygen or combustion, and the multiplied 
discovery, by bromide plates, of millions 
more of galaxies, and of yet greater dis- 
tances in the stellar universe, than those 
known to Newton, or Kepler, or Coperni- 
cus: these come in between us and our per- 
sonal knowledge of God. 

Only the common-sense appeal of God's 
word to the daily thoughts, fears, and wants 
of man can hold us secure from that unbe- 
lief which is man's easily besetting sin. 
14 



Supplemental ftlotea. 



I. 
The Duke of Argyll on Huxley and Darwin. 

In the January number of the Nineteenth Century 
for 1891 appeared an article from the pen of the duke 
of Argyll, entitled "Professor Huxley on the War- 
path." Its value in defense of the Scriptures and 
Christianity cannot be overstated. It demolishes the 
confident attitude of the great agnostic, published in 
1890 in the Nineteenth Century ', entitled "The Lights of 
the Church and the Light of Science." 

" We may fairly say," writes the duke, " that this 
article is an open and avowed attack upon Christian- 
ity. . . Nor does he conceal the full sweep of the 
destructive work which he desires to accomplish. 
Not only the whole story of creation, the whole story 
of the fall, the whole story of the flood, the whole 
story of Abraham, and of any special mission to the 
Hebrew people, but even the glorious idea and hope 
of a Messiah — the whole Messianic doctrine which 
binds the Jewish and Christian Churches — all are rele- 
gated to the same category as the Greek myths about 
Theseus. As writers of the New Testament have be- 
lieved these stories and dwelt upon them, the author- 
ity of those writers is denounced as a body of men 
who * have not only accepted flimsy fictions for solid 
truths, but have built the very foundations of Chris- 
tian dogma upon legendary quicksands.'" The duke 

(219) 



220 Supplemental Notes. 

continues: "Creation, strictly speaking, is inconceiv- 
able to us. And jet creation is a fact. The system of 
visible things in which we live was certainly not the 
author of itself. If we are capable at all of receiv- 
ing any mental impressions of its beginnings, we can 
only do so through modes of representation which are 
charged with allegory. . . We have no experience 
to go upon. Of necessity, therefore, the very idea of 
a beginning must be dealt with in the language of 
metaphor. 

"That the origin of species may be ascribed to 
something called 'nature' selecting things which did 
not yet exist, and could not therefore have been pre- 
sented for selection, is among the mysteries of non- 
sense which are not uncommon in the history of the 
human mind. But even this delusion, prevalent as it 
has been, is breaking down, and assaults upon it, all 
too timid though they be, are nevertheless increasing 
day by day. . . Professor Huxley quotes with ap- 
probation, and adopts, the grand generalization of 
John Hunter, that organization is not the cause of 
life, but life is the cause of organization; immense 
consequences are involved in this conception. Organ- 
izations are the habitations and the homes of life, but 
life must build them before it can settle in them and 
take possession. An organ is a structure for the dis- 
charge of function, but it must be shaped and made be- 
fore the function can be discharged. This luminous 



Supplemental Notes. 221 

idea sends its searching light through and through the 
stupidities which confound between-things made for use 
and things that are said to be made by use. Use as an 
intellectual aim must precede use as a physical cause. 
And so the prophetic interpretation of foetal develop- 
ment becomes the only possible interpretation of all 
organic growth, so far as is known to us. 

. . . Shells, and particularly marine shells, may 
be called the time-medals of creation. Their compar- 
ative indestructibility, and the fact that the element in 
which their inmates live is the same element which 
preserves their habitations when they die, make it 
certain that in them geology keeps her oldest, most 
complete, and most authentic record. The Quater- 
nary period is defined as that during which innovation 
was stopped as regards the development of shell-life — 
during which no new species was born — during which 
we find, with a few rare exceptions, no shell which is 
not also an existing and living species. The Quater- 
nary is the age in which we ourselves are now living. 
And yet this is the very period during which the 
greatest novelty of all seems to have been introduced, 
for it is in this period that we can first detect the ad- 
vent of man. ... In our own Quaternary period 
multitudes of the vanishing beasts seem to have been 
destroyed by some great destruction, many of them 
leaving no descendants whatever to represent their 
antique and abandoned forms. Nature has simply 



222 Supplemental Notes. 

obliterated them altogether. ... I cannot give, 
even in abstract, the astonishing facts which Quater- 
nary geology has established respecting the death and 
preservation of what is called the Pliocene and Pleis- 
tocene mammalia — and this too both in the old and in 
the new world. They have been collected and mar- 
shaled with exhaustive research and with admirable 
ability by Mr. Haworth, M. P., in his book, 'The Mam- 
moth and the Flood.' I observe that a most significant 
silence has been maintained respecting this array of 
facts and arguments, and that the old-school geolo- 
gists have found it much more convenient to ignore 
than to answer it." 

"The private letters of Charles Darwin, now pub- 
lished in his 'Life,' with all their frank and memora- 
ble confessions [writes the duke of Argyll in the April 
number of Good Words\ will accelerate and complete 
the reaction which has already begun against the accept- 
ance of his philosophy. They do not only reveal, but 
to some extent they explain, the contrast between his 
greatness as an observer and his weakness as an inter- 
preter of the facts which he observed. All that was spe- 
cial in his hypothesis rested on one idea, and that idea 
was a bungle. The phrase in which it was expressed 
('natural selection') was not only a metaphor, but it 
w T as a mixed metaphor, embodying confusion of alien 
and incongruous conceptions. It personified an ab- 
straction. This is a resource which may indeed be 



Supplemental Notes. 223 

harmless, if only the abstract idea which is personified 
be a clear one and not a muddle. But natural selec- 
tion, personified in the 6ense in which Darwin used it, 
was and is a muddle. It was essentially the image of 
mechanical necessity concealed under the clothes and 
parading in the mask of mental purpose. The word 
'natural' suggested matter and the physical forces; 
the word ' selection ' suggested mind and its powers 
of thought. Each element in the mixture commend- 
ed itself to hazy and indiscriminating recognition. 
But the elements of meaning in it which made it 
most acceptable were precisely the meanings which 
its author did not intend it to convey. All this is 
now confessed." 



11. 
Tyndal! on the Mystery of Life. 

Extract from Professor TyndalPs address before 
the British Association at Belfast, August 19, 1874: 

" Believing as I do the continuity of nature, I can- 
not stop abruptly where our microscopes cease to be of 
use. Here the vision of the mind authoritatively sup- 
plements the vision of the eye. By an intellectual 
necessity I cross the boundary of the experimental evi- 
dence, and discern in that matter which we, in our ig- 
norance of its latent powers and notwithstanding our 
professed reverence for its Creator, have hitherto cov- 



224 Supplemental Notes. 

ered with opprobrium, the promise and potency of ter- 
restrial life. 

" In fact, the whole process of evolution is the man- 
ifestation of a Power absolutely inscrutable to the in- 
tellect of man. As little in our day as in the days of 
Job can man by searching find this Power out. Con- 
sidered fundamentally, then, it is by the operation of 
an insoluble mystery that life on earth is evolved, spe- 
cies differentiated, and mind unfolded from their pre- 
potent elements in the immeasurable past. There is, 
as you will observe, no very rank materialism here." 
(Which we do not observe.) 

The scientist who " quits the microscope," and sub- 
stitutes for it " the vision of the mind," has transcend- 
ed Bacon's system of induction, and has substituted 
for it an idol of the imagination. 



in. 
The Egg and Evolution. 

In a recent number of the Presbyterian Quarterly, 
Professor Robert Watts, of the Assembly College, 
Belfast, reviews the leading assumptions of evolution. 
For instance, its claim to be equally well established 
with the law of gravitation; its claim that an egg is 
the type of their theory; the illustration of the tad- 
pole, and their claim that evolution harmonizes with 
Christianity. We wish we had room for the whole 



Supplemental Notes. 225 

article. The manner in which the so-called science is 
pulverized will perhaps sufficiently appear from the 
following discussion of the egg theory: 

" To begin at the beginning, our author takes ' the 
egg as the type of evolution. 7 

" ' Every one,' he says, ' is familiar with the main 
facts connected with the development of an egg. We 
all know that it begins as a microscopic germ-cell, 
then grows into an egg y then organizes into a chick, 
and finally grows into acock; and that the whole proc- 
ess follows some general, well-recognized law. Now, 
this process is evolution. It is more: it is the type of 
all evolution. It is that from which we get our idea 
of evolution. Whenever and wherever we find a 
process of change more or less resembling this, and 
following laws similar to those determining the devel- 
opment of an eggj we call it evolution.' (Page 3.) 

"Now, without remarking upon the unscientific 
character of the terms marked in italics — terms which 
are utterly out of place in scientific discussions — issue 
is at once joined with our author, and his chosen type 
of evolution shall furnish the battlefield. He begins 
with the egg. With all due deference, he shall not 
be permitted to begin with the egg f even in its incip- 
ient germ-cell form. No mortal eye ever discovered 
the germ-cell of an egg y or the egg itself, which did 
not come from an antecedent, parental, full-grown or- 
ganism. Eggs are not orphans. They are not found 



226 Supplemental Notes. 

lying about loose on the theater of life. An egg t fit- 
ted for the process of development referred to by our 
author, is still less likely 'to be found without an ade- 
quate ancestry. ' Every one/ he says, * is familiar with 
the main facts connected with the development of 
an egg. J The main facts — the determining facts in 
this controversy — are facts which precede and con- 
dition the formation of the egg. Not only must there 
be a parent organism, fully developed, to give being 
or birth to the egg t but there must be an arrange- 
ment for the fertilization of the egg. Apart from 
such antecedents, the egg would never * organize' 
into either 'chick' or 'cock.' These are biological 
facts that cannot be gainsaid, and they raise a grave 
question for our evolutionary friends. The question 
they raise is, ' Which is first in the evolutionary chain, 
the perfect organism or the egg} 1 This question, of 
course, admits of but one answer — the mature organ- 
ism gives being to the egg t and without it the egg had 
never been. This answer mars our author's chosen 
type. If the case of the egg is to decide the question 
at issue, his whole scheme is placed in imminent peril. 
According to our author, the development of the egg 
into a * chick ' or ' cock ' presents us with the type of 
the genesis and development of the whole chain of 
life, from the mollusk to the man. The humblest 
phase of life appears first, and the highest last. But 
according to the biological facts presented in his 



Supplemental Notes. 227 

"boasted type, the perfect organism antedates and gives 
being to the egg. If such be the law of the type, it 
must also be the law of the antitype. Our author's 
antitype, if his type means anything, must be the 
whole ascending series of organized life, from its first 
manifestations to the appearance of the human form 
divine. The law of the egg must have ruled through- 
out the series. But the law of the egg is that the 
perfect organism precedes the egg. Scientists talk of 
protoplasm and bioplasm, and the terms are not only 
not objectionable, but convenient, in the discussion of 
the science of life, but they must be used with a full 
understanding that there is no such thing as either 
protoplasm or bioplasm apart from antecedent living 
mature organism. 

u To apply the principle now established : we are 
entitled to claim that, in every instance throughout the 
progressional series of the biological forms that have 
come into being on our globe, the mature organism 
appeared first. First the hen, and then the egg; 
and first in the chain of specific life, the perfect specific 
organism. If the case of the egg is to rule, a species 
could not spring from anything save a perfect organic 
form, possessing all the specific qualities and distinct- 
ive characteristics of its future progeny." 



IV. 

" Paradise Found." 

In 1885 this most admirable work from the pen of 
Dr. W. F. Warren, President of the Boston Univer- 



228 Supplemental Notes. 

sity, was published. For elaborate discussion, thor- 
ough investigation, comprehensive survey, and pro- 
found scholarship, it is worthy of the author and of 
the sublime and beautiful theme which he seeks to ex- 
plore. Dr. Warren has collected in a volume the very 
best things that have been contributed to the solution 
of this fascinating problem, the original site of the 
Garden of Eden. The charm of his work may be 
felt in its opening paragraph: 

" One of the most interesting and pathetic pas- 
sages to be found in all literature is that in which 
Christopher Columbus announces to his royal patrons 
his supposed discovery of the ascent to the gate of the 
long-lost Garden of Eden. With what emotions must 
his heart have thrilled as, steering up this ascent, he 
felt * his ships smoothly rising toward the sky,' the 
weather becoming ' milder ' as he rose! To be near 
the Paradise of God's own planting, to be the first 
discoverer of the way in which the believing world 
could at length, after so many ages, once more approach 
its sacred precincts, even if forbidden to enter — what 
an exquisite experience it must have been to the lonely 
spirit of the great explorer!" 

The doctor adds further: "Theologians, Christian 
and Jewish, have in all ages differed, and irreconcil- 
ably differed, as to the location of the cradle of the 
human race. . ... They had many curious and 
conflicting opinions upon the subject. . . . Impa- 



Supplemental Notes. 229 

tientof such contradictions, Luther, in his own brusque 
way, rejected all attempts to locate the primeval gar- 
den, declaring that the deluge had so changed the face 
of the earth and the course of its original rivers that 
all search was fruitless. . . . Calvin, on the con- 
trary, confidently affirmed that the writer of the Gene- 
sis narrative must be understood as locating the Gar- 
den of Eden near the mouth of the Euphrates. . . . 
At the present time the state of theological teaching 
respecting Eden is, if possible, a worse Babel than in 
any preceding age." ("Paradise Found," page 25.) 

" Nearly two hundred years ago the learned Thom- 
as Burnet said: 'We may safely say that none of the 
Christian fathers, Latin or Greek, ever placed Para- 
dise in Mesopotamia. That is a conceit and innova- 
tion of some modern authors." {Ibid., page 27.) 

" It would be difficult to find any subject in the 
whole history of opinion which has so invited and at 
the same time so baffled conjecture as this. . . . 
The site of Eden will ever rank, with the quadrature 
of the circle and the interpretation of unfulfilled 
prophecy, among those unsolved and perhaps insolu- 
ble problems which possess so strange a fascination." 
(Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, page 32.) 

After all this testimony, the reader will not be sur- 
prised that the probable location of Eden is treated in 
the foregoing pages as an open question. New and 
vastly important discoveries have been made in Amer- 



230 Supplemental Notes. 

ica since the writing of the above passages by their il- 
lustrious authors. That the adventures of the great 
Spanish navigator, the discoverer of the new world, 
should be crowned in the fact also of its being an 
Eden continent, would mitigate that history of sor- 
rows, humiliations, and clouds which gathered about 
the last days of Columbus. 



v. 

The Tonnage cf Noah's Ark, Compared with that of the 
" Oceanic." 

An Old Subscriber: "Will the Times - Democrat 
please tell us the difference between the tonnage of 
the Oceanic and that of Noah's ark as described in the 
book of Genesis ?" 

There are many lengths given for the cubit, yet 
2.002 feet, or practically two English feet, has been 
accepted as the length of the sacred cubit. 

Assuming, then, that a cubit is two feet, the length 
of Noah's ark was 600 by 100 by 60 feet deep; and fur- 
ther assuming that the vessel would be loaded to forty 
feet, the displacement would be 2,400,000 cubic feet, 
equal to 75,000 tons. 

The displacement of the steamship Oceanic at deep 
load line (32^ feet) is 28,500 tons, thus showing that 
the ark was nearly three times the tonnage of the 



Supplemental Notes. 231 

great steamship Ocea?iic. — Times- Democrat, New Or- 
leans. 

The new White Star Liner, the Oceanic, the biggest 
ship in the world, was a hollow shell a month ago 
when she was launched. To-day her vast interior is 
filled with framework, and she is being divided into 
stories like a house. There are nine of these stories 
from the stoke-holes to and including the officers 
bridge. 

The Oceanic has been commented on mostly on ac- 
count of her great length of 705^ feet over all, ex- 
ceeding by fifty-five feet the largest steamship now in 
service, the Kaiser Wilhehn der Grosse. 

The tremendous size of the Oceanic can now be 
best understood by the fact that she would extend 
three city blocks in length, and would be equal to a 
nine-story building covering that entire distance. 

If the Oceanic, on her first trip to New York six 
months from now, could be hoisted up into Broadway 
at Twenty-third street, she would extend past the 
Fifth Avenue Hotel, the Hoffman House, the St. 
James building, and other buildings between them. 

This ship will be able to accommodate more people 
than the big hotels and office buildings in the three 
blocks from Twenty-third to Twenty-sixth street, on 
Broadway. 

She will have rooms for 410 first-cabin passengers, 

300 second-clas.s cabin, and 1,000 third-class. The offi- 
15 



232 Supplemental Notes* 

cers, crew, and other members of the ship's company, 
will be 394, making a total of 2,104 persons aboard 
her. This is as many as a pretty good-sized suburban 
town has. — New Tork Journal. 



VI. 

The Higher Critics — Mr. Gladstone. 

There is great pleasure in reading what you think 
is true, and still greater in reading that which you 
know is true. But outside of the Scriptures, can this 
be found? Certainly not in any history of wars, coun- 
tries, people, or events of our own times. 

What shall we think of one who sets himself to the 
work of invalidating the Word of Truth — that upon 
which the hopes of mankind have rested for five thou- 
sand years? Or, still worse, what of one who presents 
himself as defender of the faith siding with Wellhau- 
sen, the German, who doubts all inspiration? 

Mr. Gladstone has the following sentence in his 
"Impregnable Rock," page 47: "The recorder of the 
creation story in Genesis I may designate by the name 
of Moses himself, or the Mosaist, or the Mosaic writer. 
This would not be reasonable if there were anything 
extravagant in the supposition that there is a ground- 
work of fact for the tradition which treats Moses as the 
author of the Pentateuch. But such a supposition, in 
whole or in part, is sustained by many and strong pre- 



Supplemental Notes. 233 

sumptions; and I bear in mind that Wellhausen, in 
giving Bleck's ' Introduction' to the world, stated it 
as his opinion that there is a strong Mosaic element 
in the Pentateuch." 

We should have hesitated to quote such a sentence 
from so eminent a scholar, even in a note, but for the 
fact that it has been ground to chaff by Professor 
Green, of Princeton, New Jersey, and by the Bishop 
of Ely. (See " Genesis," in Speaker's Commentary.) 
Inasmuch as the Constitution of Great Britain, the 
House of Lords, and the Church of England have sur- 
vived the great Commoner, so will the Pentateuch 
still be received as the history of Israel by Moses, as 
hitherto by all the ages, and by Christ himself. 



VII. 

H. H. Howarih, M. P., on the Flood. 

"In the Pleistocene beds we are arrested by the 
large number of young animals which occur. When 
nature puts a term to an animal's life in her normal 
way, it is exceedingly seldom she does so when the 
animal is young. Animals do not die naturally in 
crowds when young, and yet we find remains of quite 
young animals abounding in all classes from mam- 
moths to mice. How are we to account for this fact, 
save by summoning an abnormal cause? How, again, 
can we account for the fact that the mummied animals 



234 Supplemental Notes. 

found in Siberia seem to have been in robust health, 
stout and strong? Is this again consistent with a nat- 
ural death? Again, if the death was natural, and in an 
area where we know hyenas and other carnivorous ani- 
mals abounded, would the corpses be left to the useless 
duties of decay, as they must have been, since the bones 
are ungnawed and (where the flesh is preserved) the 
flesh is uneaten? One cause, no doubt, of the scarcity 
of the remains of animals which are dying at present, 
where animal life abounds, is the diligence of these 
scavengers. What were they doing in Pleistocene 
times to pass by these myriads of corpses, and in so 
many cases not leave a tooth mark anywhere, and, in 
fact, to leave their own bones with the rest? Surely 
this points clearly and unmistakably to the fact that 
the animals, or the greater part of them, died together. 
If the remains were the silent chronicles of centuries 
of time and generations of life, we should assuredly 
have found that some, or a large portion, of the bones 
would have been broken and gnawed; but this is not 
the case, and it points strongly to their death having 
been more or less simultaneous. 

" The most obvious cause we can appeal to as occa- 
sionally producing mortality on a wide scale among 
animals is a murrain or pestilence, but what murrain 
or pestilence is so completely unbiased in its action as 
to sweep away all forms of terrestrial life, including 
man, as we shall see presently, the fowls of the air 



Supplemental Notes. 235 

and the beasts of the fields, elephants and mice, rhi- 
noceroses and frogs, bisons and snakes, tigers and land 
snails; and this not in one corner only, but, so far as 
we know, over the whole length of two continents, 
irrespective of latitude or longitude? The problem 
has only to be stated thus to make it obvious that a 
murrain or pestilence is quite incompetent to meet 
our difficulties. Such a pestilence, again, would not 
collect herds of incongruous animals in the same 
places, and kill them all together, and then bury them; 
and if it did so, we should assuredly have some evi- 
dence of its work in the remains themselves where we 
find none, but rather that the animals died in full 
health, with their bodies strong and hearty. 

" However ingeniously and with whatever subtlety 
we may deal with our evidence, the facts constrain us 
therefore to one inevitable conclusion, namely, that 
the mammoth and its companions perished by some 
widespread catastrophe which operated over a wide 
area, and not through the slow processes of the ordi- 
nary struggle for existence; and that the greater por- 
tion of the remains we find in Siberia and Europe are 
not the result of gradual accumulation under normal 
causes for untold ages, but the result of one of nature's 
hecatombs on a grand and widespread scale, when a 
vast fauna perished simultaneously. 

"This completes my survey of the evidence fur- 
nished by the mammoth itself, and I believe that not 



236 S tiff lemental Notes. 

only is it consistent with the conclusion that that ani- 
mal and its companions were finally extinguished by a 
sudden catastrophe, involving a great diluvial move- 
ment over all the northern hemisphere from the Pyr- 
enees to Behring Strait, but it is consistent with no 
other conclusion. The evidence is not only ample, 
but it is evidence which converges from all sides; and 
there is literally nothing on the other hand, so far as 
my wide reading enables me to judge, save a fantastic 
attachment to a theory of uniformity which revolts 
against anything in the shape of a catastrophe. Nay, 
it is more than this, for the facts are too many for such 
a theory to be held rigidly. It is rather the predicat- 
ing of the simple general catastrophe constituted by a 
wide continental flood, instead of a complicated series 
of lesser catastrophes, involving violent changes of lev- 
el, changes of climate, and deluges as well. 

" So it is clear that at the time when the elephants 
and trunks of trees were heaped up together, one 
flood extends from the center of the continent to the 
farthest barrier existing in the sea as it now is. That 
flood may have poured down from the high mountains 
through the rocky valleys. The animals and trees 
which it carried off from above could sink but slowly 
in the muddy and rapid waves, but must have been 
thrown upon the older parts of Kotelnoi and New Si* 
beria in the greatest number and with the greatest 
force, because these islands opposed the last bar to 



Supplemental Notes. 237 

the diffusion of the waters." ("The Mammoth and 
the Flood," by H. H. Howarth, M. P. See pages 178, 
i'79» i 8 3> l8 9> 191-) 



VIII. 

The Words Jehovah and Jehovah Elohim. 

The Commentary of Dr. Murphy, of Belfast, has 
the following valuable statement in respect to the use 
and meaning of the word "Jehovah" in the books of 
Moses and the Holy Scriptures: "This word occurs 
about six thousand times in Scripture. It is obvious 
from its use that it is, so to speak, the proper name 
of God. It never has the article ; it is never changed 
for construction with another noun; it is never accom- 
panied with a suffix; it is never applied to any but the 
true God." (Commentary, page 77.) 

Jehovah Elohim. 
"This word ('The Lord God ') is here for the first 
time introduced (Genesis ii. 4). . . . The union of 
these two divine names indicates Him who was before 
all things, and by whom now all things consist. It also 
implies that he who is now distinguished by the new 
name Jehovah is the same who was before called Elo- 
him. The combination of the names is specially suit- 
able in a passage which records a concurrence of crea- 
tion and development." (Commentary, page 81.) 



238 Supplemental Notes. 

IX. 

The First Verse in Genesis. 

Of this first verse Dr. Murphy says: "This simple 
sentence denies atheism; for it assumes the being of 
God. It denies polytheism, and, among its various 
forms, the doctrine of two eternal principles, the one 
good and the other evil; for it confesses the one Eter- 
nal Creator. It denies materialism; for it asserts 
the creation of matter. It denies pantheism; for it 
assumes the existence of God before all things, and 
apart from them. It denies fatalism; for it involves 
the freedom of the Eternal Being." ("Genesis," 
page 30.) 



3be iScumenical, Calvinism, etc. 



The Ecumenical of 1891. 

The Second Ecumenical Methodist Conference was 
held in Washington City in October, 1891. The topic 
of the fourth day was "The Church and Scientific 
Thought." Upon this theme there were presented an 
essay of Percy W. Bunting, entitled " The Influence 
of Modern Scientific Progress on Religious Thought''; 
an address by Rev. M. S. Terry, D.D., on "The Atti- 
tude of the Church Toward the Various Phases of Un- 
belief "; an address of the Rev. W. T. Davison, A.M., 
on the " Bible and Modern Criticism." After which 
there were speeches by the Rev. E. H. Dewart, of 
Canada; Rev. Frank Ballard, of the Wesleyan Meth- 
odist Church; Rev. J. M. Buckley; Rev. James Crab- 
tree; and Rev. William Arthur, of the Wesleyan 
Methodist Church, pro and con. The Rev. Bishop J. 
C. Keener, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, 
made the following remarks: 

" Mr. President, the paper of this morning, which 
was very elaborate and very able, said that a plain man 
in these days was not satisfied with the bare statement 
that evolution is not true. It is indeed a very difficult 
thing to conceive of the act of creation; and the mind, 
after many attempts and defeats, not being able to con- 
ceive the fact, passes off into a conception of growth, 
forgetting that growth itself is an important part of 
creation. Sir, I beg leave to read a verse which is 

(241) 



242 The Ecumenical of i8pi. 

certainly in point, being found in the book of Gene- 
esis: 'These are the generations of the heavens, and 
of the earth, when they were created, in the day that 
the Lord made the earth and the heavens, and every 
plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every 
herb of the field before it grew.' Now, sir, there is crea- 
tion; in the mind of God; in the highest conception 
and expansion of creation ; which is the law of a con- 
tinued being. To make a tree would be nothing un- 
less there were planted in that tree the law of contin- 
uance. So this is the grand marvel: there is one 
Lawgiver. It is the law that is in the mind of God, 
that is chargeable with giving to us a conception, fee- 
ble or strong, of the great work of the Master. 

" Mr. President, I cannot expect to go into any ar- 
gument on this important subject, but I deprecate these 
apologetic views of the whole matter of creation. I 
take the Mosaic account squarely and fully, as posi- 
tive, exact, and reasonable. I come entirely out of the 
region of speculation, and come into the region of 
positive truth. My brother says that, after all, the ap- 
peal is to the facts. But you cannot get facts into the 
mind of a man that has adopted a theory for twenty- 
five, thirty, forty, or fifty years. There is no clearer 
testimony of this than the statement of the duke of 
Argyll, that you may present a fact before the scien- 
tific world, no matter how plainly, and it passes by it 
as if it had not been presented. 



The Ecumenical of iSpi. 243 

" The Emperor William one day paid a visit to the 
great casting works of Krupp, and one of the mana- 
gers was showing him the remarkable control they 
had of the steam hammer which forged the great 
cannon; that they could arrest it in a moment. The 
emperor took out his watch and put it under the ham- 
mer — " (Just at this instant, much to the amusement 
of the assembly, Dr. Arthur, of England, who was sit- 
ting in the altar, called the time on the bishop; and the 
hammer of the presiding officer came down — and saved 
the watch of the emperor!) 

On the last day of the Conference, upon the topic 
of " The Outlook," the bishop seized the opportunity 
and finished his speech, as follows: 

" Mr. President, I have listened with great delight 
to everything I have been able to hear and under- 
stand in this august assembly, but have been very 
much disturbed in some directions, especially in that 
of * higher criticism. , I was not prepared for the 
wonderful advances in that direction which seem 
to have taken place among the British Wesleyans. 
I presume they believe themselves to be far in ad 
vance of us. I mean our good friends who delivered 
the Fernley lectures — some indeed not confined to 
our own Church — such as Dr. Dallinger, Mr. Beet, 
Mr. Davison, and also Bishop Temple, Mr. Flint, and 
others I might mention, some of the Church of En- 
gland, and others of the Free Church of Scotland. 



244 The Ecumenical of 1891. 

" In order that I may save time and come to the 
heart of the subject, I would inform all these gentle- 
men that within twelve hours of this place, if they 
choose to go there, are beds — fossil beds — which con- 
tain the bones of every animal ever heard of; every 
animal, whether mentioned in geologies or natural 
histories, and not a few of them ; for they comprise 
sixty-five per cent, of that vast deposit of phosphate 
of lime in the Ashley beds, evenly disposed, yielding 
eight hundred tons of this phosphate to the acre ; and 
in the last three months four million tons. These 
beds have loaded the entire tonnage of the United 
States — river, ocean, and lake — two and a half times 
within the last ten years, 

" In these beds are found the bones of the megathe- 
rium; the teeth of the beaver, of the horse; the horn 
of the Virginia deer; the gigantic shark teeth, six and 
a half inches long, indicating a length of body of one 
hundred and twenty feet. In the mouth of the shark 
there are one hundred and fifty-three teeth in one 
jaw, and one hundred and eighty-live in the oth- 
er. These monstrous teeth belong to an extinct crea- 
ture; and yet there, too, are the bones of the musk- 
rat, of the opossum, of the gigantic saurians, of the 
mastodon, of the tiger, of the elephant, and of all 
those animals that live in the neighborhood of man; 
and also the corprolite of the ichthyosaurus. When 
Agassiz came to Charleston in 1853, and there was 



The Ecumenical of iSpi. 245 

handed to him a tray full of horses' teeth, he spent 
the entire night on the floor examining them, and 
exclaimed to Professor Holmes, " These old bones 
have set me crazy; they have destroyed the work of 
a lifetime!' 

" Now, gentlemen, brethren, take these facts home 
with you. Get down and look at them. This is the 
watch that was under the steam hammer — the doc- 
trine of evolution — and this steam hammer is the 
wonderful deposits of the Ashley beds. There is 
nothing in evolution, nothing in the Darwinian the- 
ory, if you take the time out of it. When you put the 
megatherium and the beaver together; the ichthyosau- 
rus and the horse together — for there they are found 
together, there they died together, there they sleep 
together, there they lived together — it is evident they 
were created together. I say it takes the time out of 
evolution, and knocks higher criticism where the 
watch would have been if the steam hammer came 
down upon it. 

"One cannot say very much in five minutes, but 
I am anxious to say this much: My brethren, the 
greatest thing about Mr. Wesley was, that he knew 
what to get rid of. Like wild steers from a Texan 
pen of cattle, he let out the Moravian because of doc- 
trine; he let out the Calvinist because of Calvinism; 
he let out the men who advocated the doctrine of 
sanctiiication — Mr. Maxwell and four hundred with 



246 The Ecumenical of i8gi. 

him — because they invaded and warred against the 
connectional integrity of Methodism. I wish to say 
to my English friends now in this Conference, in all 
admiration for them — for no one admires these great 
men before me more than I do: Go home; get rid 
of this doctrine of evolution, that puts a nucleated 
vesicle — Wincheil's a?nceba — at the bottom of the Pen- 
tateuch and the cosmogony of Moses. It will ruin 
you if you do not get rid of it. If you cannot get rid 
of the doctrine, get rid of the men and the institutions 
that teach it, no matter how dear they are to you, for 
they will blow you up if you don't. This is the first 
fissure in the Methodist faith. We have had many di- 
visions on discipline, but none on doctrine. But this 
is a tremendous fissure in the faith of Wesleyan Meth- 
odism. 

"These words are not speculation, but sober thought. 
I profess to know nothing beyond the knowledge of a 
* plain man' in these sciences l falsely so called,' but 
I do know that there is a bed one hundred miles in 
diameter, reaching from the Santee to the Savannah, 
which Agassiz pronounced to be 'the greatest ceme- 
tery in the world, and looks as if all the creatures of 
the Postpliocene period had been summoned there 
to die.' Take the time out of Darwinism, and there is 
absolutely nothing left of it; and these Ashley beds 
knock it out." 

The hour of adjournment having arrived, the dox- 
ology was sung, and the benediction was pronounced 
by the presiding officer, the Rev. Thomas Allen 



Calvinism and Evolution. 

From the semi-centennial number of the New Or- 
leans Christian Advocate (July 5, 1900) we copy these 
two articles, which coincidently illustrate that Calvin- 
ism has found a last resource in evolution: 

Predestination — "Milk for Babes." 

BY BISHOP KEENER. 

"For whom he did foreknow, he also did predes- 
tinate to be conformed to the image of his Son." 
(Rom. viih 29.) 

L 

To create a universe of sons was the final cause of 
predestination. What a vast conception was this, to 
create a heaven, rather than a world, upon the model 
of his Son! — a region filled with persons, glorious in 
majesty, wisdom, and power; to be ultimately en- 
throned on the plane of Godhead! Those whom God 
foreknew were not only to be distinguished from na- 
ture in its loftiest moods, but were to be above all 
spirits, whether principalities, or powers, or thrones, 
or dominions in the heavenly places. So transcend- 
ent a scheme of love involved many steps: the Son 
making himself of no reputation; taking the form of 
a servant; being made in the likeness of men; hum- 
bling himself even as a man; becoming obedient unto 
16 (247) 



248 Calvinism and Evolution. 

death, even to death on the cross. Then his exalta- 
tion at the right hand of God; a name given him 
above every name; every knee bowing, and every 
tongue confessing that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the 
glory of God the Father. 

Sonship is the highest conceivable expression of 
personality. It is a personality we share with the Son ; 
of which the Spirit makes us conscious in the instant 
of conversion — " the spirit of adoption, whereby we 
cry, Abba, Father." 

With this sense of a new personality there comes a 
wonderfully distinct sense of the Creator; that he who 
forgives my sins is the one who made the world, 
which gives a new expression to nature, and nils it 
with delight. 

So high personality as sonship would seem to be 
above all limitation. It would be tatamount to limiting 
the nature of the Son himself. Therefore "the hav- 
ing predestinated us unto the adoption of children by 
Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleas- 
ure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, 
wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved" 
(Ephesians i.) takes out all limitation from the word 
"predestinate." 

If to "predestinate" is taken in the Calvinistic 
sense, of determining the elect and the non-elect, it 
substitutes "sovereignty" for personality, and there is 
left no room for faith. On the other hand, the fact 



Calvinism and Evolution. 249 

that faith is introduced as a condition of sonship proves 
sonship to be without any limit. And such is the 
fact, for " all things are possible to him that beiieveth. A, 
And it is this truth that St. Paul seeks to impress, that 
"all things work together for good to them that love 
God"; that in this relation there is the universal ex- 
pression of a universal love. " If God be for us, who 
can be against us ? " 

Faith can afford to rely on it as a boundless promise, 
higher than the heavens, deeper than the sea, broader 
than the earth. Foreknowledge cannot narrow it, for 
it expresses the freedom of divine as well as human 
personality. It is the fixed and eternal law of freedom 
secured and centered in the gift of a Son; the very 
highest statement of divine love. 

No wonder it thrilled the stars and the sons of God 
into song and shout when God laid the foundations of 
earth, and predestinated humanity to sonship! Who 
can measure the possibilities of such a relation?- "Be- 
cause ye are sons, God hath sent forth the spirit of his 
Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father; where- 
fore thou art no more a servant, but a son ; and if a 
son, then an heir of God through Christ." (Gala- 
tians iv.) 

Under the chart and arch of a universal predes- 
tination mankind is "called," is "justified," is "glo- 
rified." These constitute steps, not chains, of se- 
quence, which begin in Christ and end in glory. 



250 Calvinism and Evolution. 

II. 

It would seem that no human ingenuity could sep- 
arate the threads of gold in the first chapter of Ephe- 
sians, or disturb the sublime statement in Romans 
via., that the one great purpose of God in creat- 
ing a world, to the glory of the Son, was " that he 
might be the firstborn among many brethren"; a 
world designed through Christ for Christ. This pur- 
pose controls all things. To this end " all things 
work together for good to them who love God, who 
are the called according to his purpose." This undi- 
vided purpose grasped an uncreated universe of per- 
sons, who were one in God's foreknowledge, one by 
creation, one in Adam's moral wreck, and one in pre- 
destination to an inheritance of sonship. In such 
community of life and death there would seem to be 
no room for election. 

It was highly important that man's personality 
should be held intact from all invasion. The Calvin- 
istic theory of sovereignty as a cause, independent of 
all else, constitutes an adamantine limit. It is the cast- 
iron doctrine of Augustine — a sanctified fatalism that 
limits both God and man, dividing humanity into two 
distinct portions, the elect and the reprobate. 

It is difficult to separate foreknowledge from divine 
responsibility where power is infinite, though knowl- 
edge is not necessarily influence. The one condition 
of faith in the divine scheme of predestination effect- 



Calvinism and Evolution. 251 

ually secures man's personality, because without it 
faith is impossible. Even God himself cannot invade 
this condition by any limitation without destroying 
man's responsibility. That he has conditioned life 
upon faith in his Son necessarily gives to predestina- 
tion that quality of grace and love which embraces 
all mankind — "having predestinated us unto the adop- 
tion of children." 

Faith is essential to a personal cooperation with 
God in the work of recovery. If man could be saved 
without any concurrent act, he would presently cease 
to have either consciousness or conscience, and would 
perish in the stupor of fatalism. 

When the dark clouds of metaphysical speculation 
are lifted from these passages, the mind instinctively 
looks back to that glorious hour when "God spake, 
and it was done"; when amid rattling thunders and 
leaping fires all the mountains and floods and systems 
of worlds at his word fell into place; when nature saw 
his right hand, and heard his voice; when clouds and 
darkness gathered themselves away, and the whole 
world became a garden of God, rich in fruit and in the 
ripe gold of autumn. 

The mystery and glory of Him who made all that 
was made oppress the thought of man, and the heart 
asks, "Why should God love, or even notice, me?" 
The inspired Word opens the depth and height of this 
mystery of love. That it was God's interest in the 



252 Calvinism and Evolution. 

Son that shaped earth and man to the sublime end of 
making a universe of sons, in which his Son should be 
preeminent; where myriads should bear witness to his 
eternal Godhead. "If ye believe not that I am, ye 
shall die in your sins." Then truly is my life involved 
in the honor and love of God's dear Son — " my life is 
hid with Christ in God." Without him I am nothing; 
in him I am "no more a servant, but a son; and if a 
son, then an heir of God through Christ." (Galatians 
iv. 7.) 

Scriptural predestination elevates the whole race to 
a divine personality — that of sonship. It leaves out 
none. It brings all within the possibility of the divine 
nature, The element of personality is equally essen- 
tial to faith, to hope, to love. To throw out all by non- 
election, or any, fatally invades human personality, 
and by so far makes a universe of sons an impossi- 
bility, because things essentially contradictory are not 
possible, even to God. 



The Passing of the Giants. 

BY BISHOP CANDLER. 

Many persons are inquiring, " What has become of 
our great men? Has our country ceased to produce 
giants like those who blessed and honored former gen- 
erations?" If the complaint is justified by facts, we 
may find a partial answer, at least, in a passage written 
by Thomas Carlyle. He says: 



Calvinism and Evolution. 253 

"This is an age which, as it were, denies the exist- 
ence of great men; denies the desirableness of great 
men. Show our critics a great man — a Luther, for 
example — they begin to what they call 'account for 
him'; not to worship him, but to take the dimen- 
sions of him, and bring him out to be a very little 
kind of man, He was 'the creature of the time, 7 they 
say; the time called him forth; the time did every- 
thing; he did nothing but what we, the little critic, 
could have done, too! This seems to me but mel- 
ancholy work. The time call forth? Alas! we have 
known times call loudly enough for their great man, 
but did not find him when they called! He was not 
there. Providence had not sent him. The time call- 
ing its loudest had to go down to confusion and wreck 
because he would not come when called. 

"I liken common, languid times, with their unbelief, 
distress, perplexity ; their languid, doubting character, 
impotently crumbling through ever worse distress into 
final ruin — all this I liken to dry, dead fuel, waiting 
for the lightning out of heaven which shall quicken 
it. The great man, with his free force direct out 
of God's own hand, is the lightning. All blazes now 
around him. The critic thinks the dry, moldering 
sticks have called him forth. They wanted him great- 
ly, no doubt; but as to calling him forth! They are 
critics of small vision, who think that the dead sticks 
have created the fire. To lose faith in God's divine 



254 Calvinism and Evolution. 

lightning, and to retain faith only in dead sticks — this 
seems to me the last consummation of unbelief." 

This rugged Scotch surgeon seems to lay a strong 
hand on the seat of the disease which makes our 
times so barren of great men. At last it is a sterility 
produced by swallowing great draughts of disguised 
fatalism, which blunts a sense of responsibility and 
paralyzes courage — qualities without which no great 
man was ever produced. 

We witness a strange condition of things in our 
day. We see the fatalistic creed of election and fore- 
ordination driven out of theology, apparently never to 
return, and all the world, including the scientists and 
the men of letters, applauding the expulsion of this 
black spirit of despair. At the same time we see all 
the world, including the same scientists and men of 
letters, welcoming the monster into new habitations, 
from which he may go forth and do evil among men 
as he never could, and never did, when housed in 
theology. We find the scientists talking of the evolu- 
tion of men by processes of environment and heredity. 
What is this but the doctrine of election under a sci- 
entific name? We find the man of letters writing his- 
tory, biography, novels, and even poetry (a most mel- 
ancholy type), under the influence of this doctrine of 
despair. Out of all the mass of books being printed, 
there seeps through upon the people the corrupting 
notion that a man is but the product of his ancestry 



Calvinism and Evolution. 255 

and his surroundings, the last result of blind forces of 
which he is the offspring and not the master. This 
type of the philosophy of history is more widespread 
than any other, notwithstanding the perishing of Cal- 
vinism in the ecclesiastical world. But it is nothing 
under heaven but Calvinism stripped of its clerical 
apparel, imposing itself on the world in the garb of 
liferature and science. 

Its effects also are identically the same as when 
preached from the pulpit. It paralyzes men. The 
bite of the Gila monster does not more certainly be- 
numb the system and destroy the life. Some of its 
victims expire in raptures of optimism, crying: "All's 
well with the world, and if it is not so, I have no re- 
sponsibility for it. The times made me, and what have 
I to do that I should think or speak ill of my maker, 
or seek his reformation?" Others die in the agoniz- 
ing throes of pessimism, bewailing in their delirium: 
" Everything is going to the bad. We have come 
from chaos, lived in disorder, and are going into outer 
darkness, if not into absolute nothingness, and none 
of us can help it." 

How can great men be nourished by such teaching? 
The great man seeks the truth, but such a pursuit is a 
fool's errand, if the truth can work no change in the 
world, and, of course, no benign change is possible in 
a world dominated by heredity and environment. It 
is not worth while to investigate evolution even, for it 



256 Calvinism and Evolution. 

will grind out its results just as well when we are ig- 
norant as when we are informed of how its machinery 
works. 

The great man dares to believe that by asserting 
the truth he will make things better, and hence he 
takes the risk of proclaiming the truth he sees. He 
has courage — the courage of conviction, the courage 
to believe that truth is mighty, and will prevail; that it 
is absolutely feasible as nothing else is in God's earth. 
But this confident creed is flatly contradicted by the 
dogma that a man is the product of his times. If that 
dogma be accepted, we must believe that men like 
Moses and Paul and Luther and Wesley changed noth- 
ing. They were only puppets apparently agonizing to 
bring forth a new world, although in reality they were 
merely the natural outcome of an old world. We may 
get some greater-looking puppets than they to-morrow. 
Sufficient unto the day is the good thereof. Let us 
watch and wait. 

Ah! we will get no more like them till we throw off 
the stupor induced by this diabolical anodyne of fatal- 
ism, which our modern materialists have injected into 
the social, political, scientific, philosophic, and literary 
veins of the world. 

These great men knew they were free, and that 
they were not the victims, but the masters, of their 
times. Given the conditions in Egypt in the age of 
the exodus k> find Moses, and you have an insolvable 



Calvinism and Evolution. 257 

problem. The burning bush, not the Nile mud, made 
him. Martin Luther was not in solution in the times 
of Leo X., waiting the touch of Tetzel to be precipi- 
tated. John Wesley broke in upon the dreary life of 
the eighteenth century, and startled it as with a voice 
from heaven. He was not molded by it. He fused it 
in the fires of God's truth, and shaped it to a nobler 
form. 

It is time we had some more of the same sort of 
men. If the mere calling for them would fetch them, 
our times are calling loud enough to get them, in all 
conscience. The demand for great men was never 
more urgent, and the honors awaiting them were 
never so great. The world is so anxious to honor 
them that it runs with smothering loads of laurel for 
small men, if they do anything that bears the slightest 
semblance of greatness. In truth, our laurel has been 
so extravagantly used we sometimes find that we have 
scarcely enough to go around all the small heads nod- 
ding and begging for it. Witness the toy heroes of 
the Spanish- American war, with their contentions for 
titles, glories, and prize money. 

But the desperate need for leaders in the mighty 
work set before the present generation will be met. 
Among us now, perhaps, they walk as unappreciated 
as Moses in the court of Pharaoh, or Luther in his 
early days. They will stand up presently and tell this 
lazy, listless, faithless world that it must quit drifting 



258 Calvinism and Evolution. 

and get about its business. And the world will obey 
them. It always obeys when a man speaks to it as 
one having authority, and not as the scribes. The 
world knows a king when it sees him, and minds him, 
whether with crown off or on. Wherefore real kings 
do not need crowns, and care little for them. 

The succession of kingly men will never perish 
from the earth, though there be parched interregnums 
filled with pigmies between them. They will contin- 
ue to come and reign and bless the earth as long as 
there are found any left who believe in truth and 
human freedom, and the power of truth to uplift a 
world inhabited by free agents. When this simple 
faith has perished from among men — if it shall ever 
perish — the wretched herd still on the planet at that 
time will do well to get off somewhere else, if they 
can, for the miserable thing will soon burn up of spon" 
taneous combustion. 

Perish this doctrine of devils, which, while holding 
that the fittest survive, makes creation to culminate in 
a race of slaves, chained by an invincible heredity to 
an ancestry shading ever toward brutality behind it, 
and bound to a posterity of unredeemable bondmen 
in front! It is a lie that scandalizes man, dishonors 
God, impoverishes the earth, and robs heaven. It is 
not a good working hypothesis even, for it leads to in 
glorious indolence and incompetency. 



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